


Heaven Is Wherever You Are

by CaptainBoneyAss



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Anxiety Attacks, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, BAMF Clint Barton, BAMF Pepper Potts, Blood and Gore, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Returns, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Canon Divergence - Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Deaf Clint Barton, F/F, F/M, Feels, Flashbacks, Fluff, Headcanon, I'm Going to Hell, I'm crying, Kid Natasha Romanov, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Minor Character Rape, Natahsa is the biggest Badass, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Oral Sex, PSTD, Parent Bucky Barnes, Past Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Recovery Bucky Barnes, Post-Thor: The Dark World, Romania and plums, Sam is a badass, Slightly OOC characters, Some Characters Aren't Dead, Steve Rogers Feels, Tags May Be Updated, They are two idiot dorks that give me heart attacks, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Thor Is Not Stupid, Well written OCs, explosions of all kinds, lots of headcanons, love Sam, mentions of torture, mostly Tony, rated m to be safe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-06-08 22:14:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6875851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainBoneyAss/pseuds/CaptainBoneyAss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky snapped out of programming and is healing while tearing Hydra apart with knives and bullets. He has help. Sam and Steve look for him. One day they find him and everything changes for the Avengers and the two time worn men. Everything changes and everything stays the same. I suck at summaries just read it. On brief hiatus until my laptop gets repairs and Linux. I'm done with Windows's crap & bitchfits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I'm Here For You

**Author's Note:**

> Quick Author's note and Disclaimer: This is Very OOC to some of you, I'm jumping off of TWS, ignoring Civil War. Haven't watched it yet but what I saw broke me. So we can all pretend it never happened and this happened instead.  
> I do not own or work with Disney or Marvel. The following is pure fiction and I am not receiving any form of remuneration for writing this. 
> 
> The only thing I hope to get out of this is making a few of my fellow MCU fans smile so we can pretend that Civil War never happened, I am scarred to death to watch it. I'm writing on Deviantart's Stash Writer, there something like a roughly 5,000 word limit on it so chapters might be short.

The room was dark as he nudged open his door. His body protested as bruises twinged and bullet wounds stung. His right arm was covered in gashes and cuts from bullet grazes and swipes of some impressively placed knife. With a silent grimace, he quietly shut the door and set his bag down before rolling his shoulders and reaching for the opened bottle of Jack Daniels and pour himself a drink after rinsing out a glass. He did not start when he saw there was a significant amount missing as he picked up the bottle and carried it over with him to fetch his tumbler. There were a good four fingers gone and one of the crystal etched tumblers was missing. He did not need to look at the kitchen counter to know that his ashtray was gone and that there was someone sitting on the couch farthest from the window in his living room. No, he only got himself drink, counted the number of knives on his person, and the small gun strapped to his ankle and the other much more effective one hidden by his jacket.

 

He had caught the scent of cigarette smoke as soon as he had neared his hallway.

 

It was stronger in his apartment, familiar and he craved a drag. He couldn't remember if he'd ever smoked or if he ever shared a cigarette with someone just that he had always carried a lighter. First for women who would flirt and ask him for a light and then for men in a forest. Those memories were fuzzy and warm.

 

Calmly, he walked over to the living room and sat in an armchair. The dim light of the lamb he had on a side table flickered on and his heart stopped for a fraction of a second as his mind formulated plans. This person was supposed to be dead but here they were sitting with their legs crossed and their feet on his couch. Smoking a cigarette with a tumbler of his booze to their left on the coffee table. A book was open, The Hobbit, he recognized the dog-eared pages and the hardback cover that peeked out at him from there it lay on the table. Neither spoke for a long time, this person only took a drag from their cigarette and occasionally tapped the ash off in the glass ashtray.

 

"I came here alone, y'know." The person said. A lilting accent that held too many notes to pin down properly carried with the honesty in those words.

 

He heard traces of different northern European languages and distinct British tone that held everything together. The voice was slightly rough but quiet and somehow soft, like a smoker who had damaged their vocal chords beyond full recuperation or someone who wasn't used to speaking often. There was a bag on the ground by their feet and he carefully reached for the knife tucked into his sleeve as they reached inside.

 

To his surprise, they pulled out a clear bag with a zipper, full of medical supplies. They got up slowly and placed the bag in his lap before perching on the armrest of his seat. He glanced up them as they carefully extracted his untouched glass from his hand and placed it on the coffee table without any effort and full of smooth grace.

 

He was nudged forward gently and his jacket was removed, he noted that his visitor was careful not to dislodge any of his hidden weapons and then his shirt came off. He said nothing, only watched and registered the slow and deliberately clear movements the visitor made and how they placed his clothes and weapons within his reach.

 

There was a sense of understanding in the visitor's eyes as they made sure to test each disinfectant, the needle for stitches that were sanitized a second time with tested disinfectant, the plasters on themselves and waited for him to nod or hold out his arm so they could continue to patch him up. When his visitor was done and packing away the medical supplies, he decided to speak up.

 

"You died."

 

"Four times," the globe jumping accent replied. "With Valerie, with them, on the op and when I saw what they did."

 

"The tank." His voice was monotone but he remembered the cold water splashing his face as thin pale hands scrabbled for purchases, begging to be let go so their owner could breathe. He remembered his impromptu medic but there was no name, no warm fuzzy and sometimes panicky memories that matched the profile of his time with Steve.

 

"That would be the forth." They said and took a seat in the exact same spot, he noticed how they hesitated to find it and had only sat there again for his benefit.

 

"Why did that happen?" Barnes felt his brows scrunch together as he tried to remember why he had been used to dunk the person before him in a hole filled with slush, ice and burning cold water.

 

The person across smiled, "I found a hole, loop-holes in orders and exploited them. I used everything they had against them, the tank happened because I was impulsive."

 

"You ran." He said, flickers of dingy halls and downed guards, pain shooting through every limb and then fresh air. Living like animals for two months of pure bliss and panic before it went black. The memory was so badly damaged that he only had tiny glimpses of what had happened. He had told someone to run and held them back, buying time. He could hear his own fear riddled voice scream with bloodcurdling urgency.

 

"Sargent?" the voice called and he looked up and it was like seeing his late night visitor for the first time. He knew they had called him that and not by his name. Just to make him comfortable. He could tell by the way his unexpected medic held their breath and tried to keep dark blue eyes from searching. He remembers a skinny and short frame piling extra leaves on his side of their nest to make him comfy, they'd said. Because of his arm.

 

"Ellie." He breathed out, a hoarse whisper. The woman before him smiled broadly, her plump cherry red lips stretched into a grin that seemed to light up the room as tears welled in her eyes and the dim light made them shine every brighter. Her deep blue eyes scanned his face and he noticed her hands barely twitch, she wanted to move but to do what he didn't know. She had already healed him. "How?"

 

"I was very good at sneaking around since I could walk." She said as she lit up another cigarette and tossed the pack to him with the lighter snugly placed in the box. "I learned how they put up protocols and placed a few myself and tied them to a constant sensory stimulus. The only constant was blood."

 

"Fitting, for a gal like you." He said as he pulled out a cigarette, lit it and took a drag. He was surprised he didn't choke on the smoke, his body remembered how to do this. "When did you-"

 

"Run away?" She asked and he nodded, "A few days before Manhattan was attacked by the Chitauri. I overheard that SHIELD had found Captain Rogers and I snapped, I remembered you, and I played along until I was assigned my op. Soon as I was out of sight, I triggered an EMP and walked the other way."

 

"That easy?" Barnes mumbled as he picked up his glass and drank the liquor, now trusting the other person in the apartment enough to relax. The woman laughed a little, a touch too gravely but airy giggle that made his chest tighten.

 

"I had deep set triggers to force myself to walk away, planned that for nearly half a century and I almost failed." Her tone changed as she took a drink of whiskey, "I went underground for months, adjusting and trying to heal, left you signs that only you would recognize and would keep secret because you only knew it was important and even if dead I was the only other person you could report them to."

 

"You set overrides?" He asked, schooling his feature to hide the sense of betrayal.

 

"Yes, I did. Overrides that would trigger slowly and subconsciously once you broke out of their grasp." She said calmly, making sure he heard her perfectly. "One only I can set and set without any pain. I set them so I could go back for you and drag you out of there without tranquilizers."

 

The look on his face said the words he couldn't speak. "It took me a while to get stable enough to get you, to ignore their overrides and protocols," She took a deep breath to settle herself and kept her hands from shaking. "I couldn't find you, Barnes."

 

"Why didn't you come for me after DC?" He asked, the coldness and hurt in his voice surprised him and made the pain worse, but the way her face twitched made him feel better and worse at once.

 

"Would you have let me near you on the river bank?" She asked, her eyes seemed darker somehow. "I was hiding in a tree ten feet away from you when you pulled the Captain out. I had climbed halfway down, about to jump in after the both of you. You didn't notice me. If I had shown myself we wouldn't be having this conversation."

 

"I would have thought you were there to bring me back." He said with a small amount of guilt and anxiety. The woman simply nodded from behind her whiskey. He looked at her and noticed the subtle changes from the girl who had been the assets shadow where he had been a ghost all those years ago. She was much paler, her features much sharper and her lips stuck out a tiny bit more than they used to, there was a faint smell of blood around her and his arm had registered an abnormally low body temperature when she had brushed against it as she patched him up. "What happened?"

 

"I was like this before they got me, they just let it develop and grow." Her discomfort was palpable and he made to tell her to forget it. He didn't need to know, there had always been something strange about the girl. It only became obvious when that op went horribly wrong and he had carried her nearly lifeless body back to base. "I'm sick with something horrible, but my body adapts to things and it's been locked inside it. I can't hurt me anymore, but the adaptations... they changed things."

 

"Like the serum?" He asked, on a whim and she looked down with a small smile on her velvet red lips.

 

"Something like that." She said, "just more volatile and complications are different."

 

"How did you find me?" He said as he got up and went to sit next to her, she leaned against his left arm and he pulled her closer, his forearm brushed against something and a bittersweet smile curled his lips.

 

"Followed the path of destruction, this was my apartment for a while. I carved a flower into the building wall near some graffiti." She said as accepted the ashtray from him and stubbed out the cigarette bud, "No one suspects Helsinki. Except me, and one other person."

 

"One other person?" he said, slipping into Russian on accident.

 

"I trust him, never touched Hydra, he's a good kid and only wants to help." She answered in Finnish both to ease his embarrassment and keep the conversation secret from prying ears.

 

She pulled out a smartphone from her pocket. She unlocked the screen and it changed to a picture of her and kid, no older than seventeen, both were smiling and he had her smile and eyes only lighter framed by messy black hair. "He likes to go by TJ, Tomas James."

 

"Is he-"

 

"No, I found him, distant cousin but my kid in every way that counts." She said as she went to answer a text and she let Bucky read over her shoulder with no concern. "An American military division was using mutants as weapons and I found him wandering in the aftermath of a breakout."

 

Kiddo: Bring me food?  
Eleanor: We'll see, homework done?  
Kiddo: Um, almost? Homemade or are you picking up something wrapped in foil?

 

He had read quick enough to catch the conversation as Kennett typed in 'foil' and pressed send before locking her phone. Bucky frowned when he realized that he was the food in the coded conversation. He glanced at her with a pout, amused but still affronted.

 

"Would you rather be a teddy bear?" She asked and patted his chest before getting up and signing with her hand. It felt warm and familiar, something had happened before they lost all control.

 

They had to leave, it's what the sign had meant, it was a part of a small set of signals they'd come up with on the few ops they had to tackle together. He had always been the face while she picked off people from shadows, pulling them into doorways or out of sight. All he knew about those ops was that they had been quick, more often than not covered in blood and one had gone extremely wrong.

 

Bucky approached her and grabbed her waist softly as he pushed her against a wall near a window, kissing her and smearing her cherry red lipstick, he pulled the blind's closed. As soon as the blinds closed he stepped out of her personal space and gathered the few things he cared about into a backpack along with his clothes. She didn't laugh or make a comment about the particular diversion tactic. If anyone had been watching, they would just see two people making time. It wasn't the first time they'd used this tactic as an excuse to close windows when they were being watched.

 

She asked where his weapons cache was and emptied it for him, humming appreciatively at a few pieces before following him to his closet and pushing the rucksack of weapons into the air vent he had opened for her. She went in first and with one last look at what had been his safe haven the past few weeks he followed after.

 

The trip through the air vents brought back numbed and seemingly harmless memories, the quake of his limbs in trenches, the back of Steve's head as they escaped the hydra base where everything had started, the mad dash through the halls with Eleanor before they broke him, the many times he's been in vent systems. He swallowed to help pace his breathing as he kept crawling after her. He wills himself to take a deep breath when they crawl out of the building's innards and to a back entrance.

 

The cold wind and the smell of car exhaust mixed with food in the surrounding shops make it the most comforting breath of air he's had since seeing Steve was still breathing when he got them to the riverbank.

 

...linebreak...

 

He sits at a makeshift table, a pair of wooden produce crates, in an ancient wooden chair. They're in a rundown shack somewhere in Lithuania and there is a ruined Hydra base a couple miles away but no sign of Bucky other than the signature of what they taught him smeared on the walls in bright red to put his name to the picture of rigor mortis contorted corpses. Sam is asleep on a bedroll in the corner, it's more like a tiny reinforced tent than your standard military bedroll and Steve has Tony to thank for them. He was stunned that Stark wanted to help, where he could while holding the fort and preparing for when they came back with Bucky.

 

They all knew how Howard and Maria had died, Steve had seen Stark reading the file the morning before he left. Sam and Steve had chosen to ship off from the newly christened Avenger's tower and had had the equivalent of goodie bags shoved at them or mysteriously left at their bedroom doors. Natasha had gone all out and handed him a new uniform, the fabric was strange. She merely said it was from a friend she trusted and wanted to help.

 

He remembered that morning well, it was the last morning they had with the team that had become a sort of misfit family over the short few months they had spent together. Stark was reading the file as he held a coffee cup in a relaxing grip, a file Steve had kept hidden in his apartment for one reason. It listed the Asset's missions, right in the middle or the thick file was the assassination of Howard Stark. _With details_.

 

Steve turned to where Natasha was ripping french toast into small bites with her fingertips and popping the resulting fragments into her mouth, she was still in pajamas and her hair was mussed from sleep. He could see pillow creases on her cheek. She shook her head minutely and flicker her eyes to Clint. The archer only held Steve's searching eyes. Completely immune to the Captain's reproachful glare with a serenity that was beyond Steve as he took another bite of his grilled cheese and chewed almost bored. Panic had risen in his chest and then Tony spoke.

 

"Kids, shut up." He said and took a swig of coffee. "No, Steve you can not add more sugar to your cereal. You'll get a stomach ache at school and I don't want a call from the nurse to bring you home."

 

Tony wasn't even looking at them but he knew that Steve was reaching for the sugar bowl. Once they had convinced him that he didn't have to ration anything he had let that starved sweet tooth of his reek havoc on various fruits, all kind of sugars, desserts, and candies. On top of everything, he ate the most blindingly colorful and sickeningly sweet breakfast cereal he could find.

 

Almost every morning. Except for Syrup Saturdays when the whole team piled around the communal floor's kitchen island and ate all kinds syrup drenched and buttery breakfast foods. One of them would always fill a small bottle with a different flavored syrup and label it 'Super Soldier Syrup'.

 

Steve's smile at the stupid joke never failed to appear and they would all deny secretly holding their breath and waiting for the approving hum and nod from the national icon. Between the amount of pancaked and waffles he ate, the ever shrinking level of syrup, they all began to wonder if the serum protected him against worms or if he burned sugar like they did calories.

 

That morning Tony set down his coffee cup and looked at Steve, assessing him. The snap of the file against the marble countertop made Steve look at it and Tony walked out of the common kitchen and into the elevator without a word. The cereal in Steve's bowl suddenly looked as repulsive as soupy remains with maggots for rainbow colored puffed rice flakes. Bitter, acrid, and tasting of ash. Natasha doesn't look, talk or make an attempt to touch him. Her freely offered comfort and warmth coming off in waves and sinks into his clenching gut. Clint's rude crunching of his grilled cheese is like a thumb wiping away the tears still caught in his eyelashes. No one speaks and when Clint gets up to put the file in a vent so that he can destroy it later. It feels like one of the warmest hugs he's ever shared, almost as warm as Bucky's when they were finally alone after bringing back the 107th.

 

The tears that never fell that morning slid silently down his cheeks when they're on the rooftop about to get into a Quinjet and Tony comes back a noon carrying three rolls of fabric and metal plates. Stark sets them with the rest of their gear and the panic that's been eating at Steve unwinds and he feels like he can breathe for the first time since breakfast. It leaves him dizzy like the asthma attacks from before; when Bucky would hold his skinny back to his chest to keep his airways open.

 

"You kids'll catch a cold. Mom's away and I suck at wiping noses." Tony says and pulls Steve into a tight and rough hug for the first time since they met.

 

Steve can feel him shaking. His voice is rough and cracked with fear and possibly worry but Steve doesn't let himself hope. Stark knew they were going to trapeze from Hydra base to Hydra base in the middle of nowhere to bring back a man that might not even recognize Steve, and he was terrified. Natasha is suddenly on guard while Clint pretends to be quietly saying goodbye to Sam even if they had already done that before Tony walked onto the helipad.

 

Steve's pretty sure that Natasha was only one outside himself who heard Tony's shaking tear thickened voice when he whispers into his ear. "Don't get shot, bring him back. Please be safe."

 

The last plea is raw with emotion and it warms Steve down to his toes as the knot in his throat grows, cuts at the soft tissue in his neck, and spikes pierce his vocal chords. Tony claps him on the back with a firm friendly hand and when he pulls away. The only tells are his too bright eyes and the slight parlor to his tan skin. The shaking hands are plunged into denim pockets before anyone can see. Otherwise, he's smiling brightly at him with that shit eating grin. Like Steve's really a little kid heading off to school for the billionth time and his only worries are moronic bullies and girls with cooties.

 

Steve can only nod, the last of his worry ebbing away but he can't speak. His throat won't work. Tony wants Bucky here, despite what they made him do. Tony doesn't hate Bucky. He made Bucky something to keep him warm and protected in his sleep. A warm cocoon Bucky could trust and sleep in comfortably and would keep him safe from bullets, and explosions if the loud booming noises going off since breakfast were anything to go by.

 

Tony waited until the quinjet was far enough that they couldn't see him shaking and he ran for the door to the roof, into the elevator and out of the New York winter winds. Natasha didn't hesitate to sit next to him on the floor and hold him as he cried for so many reasons he couldn't name them all. Clint had already slipped into the vents and was making them hot cocoa. He would have three mugs and probably a ridiculously large blue duvet on the couch. No one knew where he kept such a huge duvet or where he got it from, they just knew it was better than tranquilizers and Clint always brought it out and burritoed you before you could notice. They spent the entire afternoon in a tangle of limbs and duvet on the ridiculously large couch. When Thor and Bruce came home, no one said a word or made any moves to explain or ask for anything.

 

With surprising grace and care, Thor wiggled in behind Tony and held the inventor's back to his chest becoming a solid, warm and grounding support for Tony and the two former SHIELD agents. Bruce made them all some warm honeyed milk with a shot of liquor and sidled up next to Natasha after passing around the warm drink and flicked on a quiet documentary about fluffy animals that no one would remember. They were all worried about how Steve's self-assigned mission would treat the two men.

 

 

Steve looked at Sam as he snored softly in the warm bulletproof cocoon and then at the unused sleeping bag rolled up and propped against a wall. They had been tailing Bucky for weeks only catching glimpses of him in the Ukraine. Just flashes of a metal arm and a few locks of hair disappearing on the rooftop as they looked up from street level to where the shot had come from. They completely ignored the crumpled body of a man in his fifties on the ground like a discarded rag doll. The only blood visible was seeping out of the bullet hole in the man's skull, the shot was clean and discrete. They moved north after receiving some intel from Natasha about the man, but all they found was the destroyed Hydra base.

 

His phone chirped at him and Sam stirred, having slept his fill.

 

It was a text from Natasha, and Sam got up and stretched before jumping up and down a little to get his body to wake up and blood flowing. He sat on the sturdier of the crates and twisted the cap off of a bottle of juice they had gotten from a store.

 

"New lead?" Sam asked behind a yawn and took another swig of juice.

 

"Natasha has a friend that wants to meet with us."

 

"Where to Cap?" his friend said and Steve was smacked in the face with wonder as Sam simply started collapsing the bedroll into a cylinder. Sam wasn't leaving him. He was staying, hasn't once complained about anything other than Steve not getting enough sleep, during this whole miserable search in this cold damp hell.

 

"Finland."


	2. We'll Be By Your Side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finland, allies, flowers, and Tony.

_"New lead?" Sam asked behind a yawn and take another swig of juice._

_"Natasha has a friend that wants to meet with us."_

_"Where to Cap?" his friend said and Steve was smacked in the face with wonder as Sam simply started collapsing the bedroll into a cylinder. Sam wasn't leaving him. He was staying, hadn't once complained about anything other than Steve not getting enough sleep, during this whole miserable search in this cold damp hell._

_"Finland."_

\--------------------------

They catch a flight on quinjet that's in the area, Coulson's team was recovering some tech to reverse engineer and they give them a lift to the outskirts of Helsinki. They're cold and tired, their focus slipping a little and they don't notice the kid with black hair slipping out of a sex shop and pulling out a phone or the kids fingers sliding over the screen before pocketing it. Steve does however notice the strange pentagram in the corner of the rather tame display window. It catches his eye because the top points are rounded like a heart. But they completely miss the kid who's eyes had darted over them for a second, long enough to recognize the pair, discretely and had sent a message to someone before he walked off in the opposite direction calm as you please.

They take turns carrying Bucky's bedroll and check into a discrete motel. It's like a constant presence of the man they've only caught too few and far between glances of, an extension of Bucky even though he's never touched it. Twin beds wait for them and so does some warm food from a shop with a cashier that spoke broken English. Natasha's text had been very vague, they just said that her contact would find them. That the contact doesn't like people coming towards them, they evaluate and then approach. To Steve, it sounds promising. If they had information on Bucky and were guarding it this closely then they had probably had some form of contact with him. It gave Steve a little hope that this person, Natasha's mysterious contact, wasn't Hydra. Or at least not an active operative, maybe a turncoat or former Hydra, and at this point he'd take what he could.

Coulson's team told them that there were whispers of a Hyrda base up north so they rest for a few days in Helsinki before heading out, hopping the contact shows up but they don't. So they choose to go see what they can find at the base. Steve doesn't even bother trying to wrap his head around the fact that Phil is alive. He just files it away for later, in the mean time he just goes along with it.

The base seems to have taken a lot of damage but it's weather worn, they head back to their camp in a secluded cave and load their weapons and add as much more as they can move around with. They wait until night takes over completely and they can barely see. Sam flips on night vision goggles and Steve slips on his mask, his eyes have always seen better in the dark.

They are completely silent, Steve spares Natasha a thought. She would probably be smirking at them, secretly proud she to see them moving along the shadows with barely a whisper. They circle around the area, taking out a few guards on patrol. The lookouts are all skittish and scatterbrained, something had scarred them badly and they were all on edge. One nearly screams when he catches sight of the metallic gleam of Steve's shield before the vibranium hits his skull soft enough to fracture his nose and knock him out.

When they get in, it's easy if not a little rough on their already cold and straining muscles. Its the third level that proved to be too much and things go south, real fast.

\---  
His head is swimming, every muscle in his body burns and he's pretty sure he can hear Sam swearing like never before. That is grounding because it's amusing and surprising, it's not familiar but it's enough to make the knot in his gut loosen a fraction. Sam is still alive, they didn't bring him in first.

He feels them pull him from the floor and across a room that smells like leather and blood and ozone. They dump him in a chair, the leather is warm and scratched up at the armrests. He has enough time to glance down as his fuzzy brain begins to clear. There are layers of tape covering nail marks and the left one if bent out of shape and there is no padding on it. He has an idea of what this is and his brain is slow to send the message to his body. Move.

Sam grows quiet as a blur of movement rushes past Steve hazy line of sight. All black and grey and sharp, a graceful dance of limbs and flashes of silver metal. Then everything grows a deep dark red as screams sound and there's a coppery tang in the air clashing with the ozone and leather. He blinks and his mind clears in an instant, everything coming into sharp focus. The drugs they flooded him with still make him queasy but the sluggish effect fizzling away, too slowly for his liking. His body feels like its not his own again, limbs too long and big to move like his much slimmer and weaker frame.

A slim figure with an armored tactical suit, looking like a cross between Tony's suit and Bucky's Hydra gear, is dancing between enemies with knives and snapping necks. Sam is holding ground around him, keeping the onslaught of Hyrda goons away from him and for the slim helmet wearing being to pick off. The macabre dance ends both too quickly and not quick enough. The floor has enough blood on it that it mirrors Steve's boots. It puddles in the wrapped concrete to the point Sam's shoes cause a small splash as he moves to help him to his feet. The walls are dripping with arterial spray. He looks at the figure with his brow furrowed noting that there is almost no blood on the suit or the suit is too dark to tell. The only blood on him and on Sam was their own and what they had gotten onto themselves before this mess.

The figure straightens after tucking the stilettos into their boots and nods at him, asking if he's okay silently and he tries to catch his breath and nods. With a few graceful strides their dark clad stranger goes to his left and bring his arm around their shoulder. The stranger wraps one hand around his back, a fair distance from Sam who has his shield and straps it to his back for him. They move to the door slowly and the stranger shifts them so they can peek out first and guides them to the oposite direction in which they looked, a gun from a hip holster already in their hand. Steve notes the silencer as he tries to walk without making his tailbone remind him of a healing break. The stranger shoots down five guards as they round corners before the guards can even see them properly and Steve is a little surprised each time. He had heard the guards coming but couldn't speak up and the stranger's body language looked almost bored as the lifeless bodies hit the ground after a nearly silent whistle.

They navigate the second level undetected and slip into the first, he's steadier now and Sam sticks close while the stranger starts planting bombs on support beams and important looking walls. The explosive charges were smaller and more polished than the one he had seen the stranger leave on the chair they has strapped him to. That charge looked like it had been made for its punch and fairly recent. They had seen the apparently mute assassin, there was no doubt in Steve mind what this person was, throwing little metallic balls across the floor of the third and second level. It didn't take a genius to understand that the stranger wanted to blow this place to hell probably as much as Bucky and Steve did. No explosive that aesthetically pleasing was built without taking pain and retribution into account. They spoke of cold and thorough revenge.

Shots sound and the stranger ducks and looks towards Sam and Steve before rolling behind a pillar and digging into a pouch on their thigh and toss a tiny flat disk towards the shooters in a door way. Steve and Sam cover their new found ally with gunfire whenever a pair of hands or a barrel is visible. Sam makes to fly but a cutting sign from their ally stops him and the figure pulls what looks like a detonator out of their pocket and Steve panics for a second. Before he can do anything, the stranger presses down and the guards in the doorway scream as a buzz is heard.

The escape is much quieter than getting in had been, Sam looks at him and raises his eyebrows with a tired look. Yeah, it's quieter because he's not planning the escape. Hydra hadn't thought they'd make it out alive. Before he can form a quick retort or let that revelation sink in, the stranger is up with the same make and model gun, silenced, as before in both hands and telling them to go to the door with a sharp twitch of their helmet-clad head. The helmet has a huge visor and Steve can almost see the contours of an angular face peeking out at them through the opaque material.

This time the stranger cover's their backs while Sam gets sandwiched in the middle. They hear several sharp hisses from the gun but don't look back, it seemed all personnel had moved to the top level and returned to routine tasks but someone had sounded the warning.

There are over twenty armored guards waiting for them in the wide gray hall with a low ceiling that led to the door not twenty feet away, and several snipers from the looks of things in the higher end of the hall they had just snuck across. He didn't let himself wonder how many had tranquilizers and which ones had bullets. The fight broke out in an instant and Steve shot at them from behind his shield while Sam took off like a rocket. He saw the stranger battled in close range from his twelve to his six as snipers began to fall to the ground.

He cut a man in half with a throw of his shield and didn't have time to dwell on it as a ten of the remaining guards circled the him and the stranger while Sam was still in the air. He found himself back to back with the stranger and they fought with out a hitch. They mirrored their moves and he picked the light figure up, hooking his arms with theirs to flip them over, more a dance move than combat. A move that he had seen Bucky execute back in dance halls and ball rooms too many times to count. The stranger twisted to their knees and ducked under the shield as it flew over the helmet, not even six inches between their head and the shield, and turned the opposite way to shoot the men behind Steve as he let his shield take out five and shot two more.

He stared wide eyed at the figure as they rose to their feet, a slight pant coming through the helmet. He could make out two eyes looking up at him. Suddenly the assassin's left hand rose in a blink and they turned their head along with Steve, sparks falling from torn cables in the low ceiling as Sam landed behind them. It was a fraction of a second but it was terribly slow to Steve. The recoil and whistle of the silenced Smith and Wesson brought him out of his confused daze as a guard that had woken up dropped to the floor with his weapon clattering beside him. It felt like the bridge again, Bucky hidden behind the mask and fighting him with all his might. Only this masked assassin was fighting for them. The figure didn't turn to face him and Steve watched as they walked down the hall and opened the door, he followed. The tendrils of confusing and a small amount of fear wriggling in his gut as he braced the howling Finnish winter.

The figure stood by an armored truck with dark windows. Sam glanced at him when they saw their gear in the small bed of the truck. The assassin was leaning on the hood of the truck, arms folded over their chest and one leg crossed over the other. Waiting for them in an extremely casual fashion. Steve nodded at the assassin as they walked closer and the assassin nodded back. Their silent ally pushed off the running truck and opened the back door for them and shut it after Sam got in but made no move to climb into the passenger seat. The driver opened the door anyway.

They nearly gawk in disbelief at the teenager behind the wheel brought the first sound they had heard from the person they had just seen brutally murder over twenty people and who they had just gotten into a car with in the middle of a frozen forest. Not to mention these people had dropped by their makeshift shelter and piled their gear into an expensive and specialized looking vehicle. There was a click and a very soft whirring sound that made him weary but Sam nudged his arm and he kept his gun in his holster. The assassin's voice was heavily distorted by the helmet, just a few words in Russian where spoken and the the masked figure shut the door after nodding to the two soldiers. With elegance and not wasting a single movement the assassin vaulted into the back of the truck. Steve saw them picked up a rifle, and set it up comfortably over their supplies, blending in perfectly with the tarp as the black suit changed to match the white of truck and surrounding snow.

The kid started to drive. Keeping his eyes and the road and glancing at his partner, a mentor perhaps, and the two in the back seat. His straight shoulder-length black hair was parted down the middle. His green-blue eyes where large and bright, focused on the task at hand but still amused. Steve focused on what he could see of his face, a long button rounded nose, slim but full pink lips and strong jaw. His long black eyelashes, large eyes, soft looking mouth and cheek bones make him look too young, feminine even. But there was a hardness to his face that Steve and Sam could only chalk up to experience. They were not ignorant to the fact that the kid was doubling back and weaving over previous tracks.

He saw them notice and he grinned, a sharp smirk that had Steve wondering what this kid would look like when he was older. Probably someone hard to miss in a crowd.

"Tomas Kennett, Natasha's contact." He said with a slight British accent as his grin became a sunny smile.

 

Steve's mind shifted gears and it the boy's predatory smirk and driving skill suddenly made sense.

 

"Steve Rogers." He said as he shook the hand offered at a slightly awkward angle as the adrenaline began to flush out of his system.

 

"Sam Wilson" He heard Sam call and then there was a huge blast and the sky lit up behind them. They both turned to see the roaring ball of fire that consumed the Hydra base and the car jumped a little. The dark haired teen tossed a detonator to the passenger's compartment and turned to face them with a shit eating grin.

 

"Wait, you were the kid at the sex shop," Sam said and rolled his eyes as exasperation bloomed over his features.

 

The kid laughed, high and bubbly as he threw his head back and kept driving. "Now you notice that."

 

"What?" Steve said as he tried to remember a sex shop, the only one he could remember was the rather tame one in Helsinki with the odd pentagram in the upper corner of a display window.

 

"It was a control test, we wanted to see how your wits were," Kennett responded in a husky drawl and Steve caught sea blue eyes grinning at him the rear view mirror. "You failed _spectacularly_ and plans where adapted."

 

Kennett was quiet for a while as they reached a large cottage surrounded by thick evergreens, snowy rooftop and all. The kid parked the car expertly. "Home sweet home."

 

The kid helped them out of the car while the assassin hopped off the truck taking the rifle with them and nodded at the two men before heading inside, they hadn't even made it to the front door when they saw the slim figure climb out a window and onto a small sniper nest on the roof and the rifle was propped up again in record time. Sam was already looking at him before Steve could even ask.

"You don't think..?" Steve trailed off.

"He _taught_ Морозник." Kennett called as he nudged the door open and switched the level on the fuse box right inside the door. The lights in the house switched on and the teen got to setting a fire from a few hungry embers.

 

"How do you like your the new duds, Captain?" He said with a sweet smirk as he stoked the growing fire and moved a pot full of stew into the fireplace. Convenient, how food was waiting for them.

A small smile graces his features at that word, he hasn't heard it for what seems like a few years but knows it amounts to over half a century. The biting wind clings to their faces and for a second his mind transports him to the frozen peeks and labyrinths of the Alps. His heart clenches and he blinks rapidly to keep back the tears that have become a knee-jerk reaction. A soft had finds his shoulder and his misty eyes flick up a fraction to find a set of shadowed eyes peeking at him from behind the helmet.

He nodded and the masked figure squeezes his shoulder once last time before pointing that same hand, upturned, to the teen and curling fingers in a clear sign for 'give'.

With out, a word the kid tossed a what Steve recognizes as an epi-pen and the black-clad stranger, Moroznik the teen had said, simply pulls down the collar of the suit a fraction. Deathly pale skin contrasts with the once again black tactical gear, so far that's the only part they've seen of this person. The skin of their neck, the feint thrum of blood pumping under the thin tissue, an incredible show of trust but reveling nothing. Steve misses being an average person in times like these. The stranger simply sticks themselves with the needle, body tensing for a moment before pushing the button with their thumb. The hiss of the device mingles with the fire and bubbling of a rich stew. They hear a muttered curse and a few pants from the stranger.

 

"Kicks like a mule still?" The teen asks and only gets a nod in return. "Back to transfusions until we can tweak it."

The assassin tilts their head, body language full of protest and fond exasperation before nodding tiredly and tossing the epi-pen back to the kid. He catches it and tucks it in his back pocket and goes to the cabinets.

"Right. Dear parent of mine, go do what you do and keep an eye out for anyone crashing our bbq. I don't need more Hydra related panic sapping away my life span. I've got to Avengers to feed." Kennett said and went to ladle the mouth watering scented stew into rustic wooden bowls.

"Parent? As is Mom and Dad?" Sam asked at the figure's retreating back, the figure just shrugged and hopped up the stairs with out further elaboration.

"Adopted, a distant relative, but yeah." The kid said as he sat down with his own bowl of food, having set bowls for his guests out first.

The tired laugh that bubbles up takes some of the tension off their shoulders as they sit down and dig in, taking slices of the hearty loaf of warm bread set on a wooden cutting board. Steve had liberal amounts of butter, Sam counted it as a win and tried to smother his smile behind his spoon.

They eat in silence for a while and they know they're being watched as Kennett waits for them to recover a little from the buzz of what they left behind them and the bitter cold. By the time Steve's feeling warm enough only a couple minutes pass and Kennett's picking at a slice of bread, ripping it to shreds with nimble fingertips and popping the resulting fragments into his mouth. It makes him blink and the kid gives him a small smile.

 

"So what do you want to know first." He says, the slice of bread still caught between his fingers as he elbows rest on the table as Sam pushes away his clean bowl.

 

Sam is the first to speak as Steve's mind is bombarded with seven different questions and he can't pick one now that the atmosphere and food have gotten rid of any sense of urgency and unease that had plagued him since D.C.

 

"What's with sniper Mom, or Dad?" Sam says with a hint of amusement as he runs his hands down the outsides of his thighs, a grounding exercise Steve's learned to spot.  
  
  
  
"Like them, but organic. At first anyway." He answers and leaves more questions than answers. "She should be dead by all accounts, especially not being that sick. Don't even get me started about Hydra poking around your DNA. "  
  
  
  
"Sick?" Steve manages to ask as he tries to piece everything together, his head is still a bit fuzzy from the fight not even half an hour ago.  
  
  
  
"It's contained,  after what they did to her it can't hurt her anymore.  Silver linings huh?" He says as he takes another piece of bread between his lips. "Морозник's body destroys or adapts foreign agents, it sees viruses and harmful bacteria as injuries and damage. So it destroys or takes it apart and fits the useful pieces into defense systems to better tissue regeneration and create a very specific and personalized vaccine if you will."  
  
  
  
He pauses for a moment and sets the bread down, giving up on the pretext of eating. "This" he says, taking out the used epi-pen and twirling it between his fingers, "was too big for it to handle and there was too much damage taken before point of infection for it to fully solve the problem, so it fought it on one front and healed pre-exposure injuries, while it started to take it apart and reprogram it. She's lucky,  I think."  
  
  
  
They're still dressed in their gear, their weapons, Sam's wings, and Steve's shield are strategically place around the room but nobody reaches for it. Both men have noticed how the room is arranged to provide cover but the furniture remains unobtrusive, everything looks replaceable and impersonal despite the warm atmosphere. The whole place is also sniper proof, the windows look way to thick to be simple glass and the walls are thick enough to label the cottage as a well disguised bunker. These are the only reasons they let themselves relax. Any other way, Sam and Steve would have been gone. They dealt with weird but this was starting to feel a little too out there.

 

"Honestly." He looked at Steve, "There is no way we know about Barnes and hold Natasha's trust and be normal."

 

Then he turns to Sam, who's got a slight frown on his face but there is humor there. " _You_ aren't normal either, you do everything they do. Just slower."

 

"Natasha?" Sam says with a good-natured huff.

 

"Where do think she runs off to when Barton isn't around?" He says with a smirk. "But no, it was Fury. Between him and Natasha, well, he owes us a few now."

 

"Not Natasha?" Sam says with a quirked eyebrow and Kennett shrugs.

 

"Never Nat," He says and picks off the last bit of the crumb, leaving a semi circle of crust. "She'll never owe us anything."

 

There is something there and Steve want's to ask, Sam just smiles warmly. A small gentle smile and that shuts him up. It's not the time.

 

"She said you had something to help us find Bucky." Steve cuts in and Kennett looks up at him, his head snapping up and to the side as if he pulled him out of a moment. He ignores the look Sam sends him and hold Kennett's gaze.

 

"I do, but it's pretty much the same advice she gave you." His voice is low and Steve can feel the hurt in it. "Only a little different."

 

The gives him a moment to compose himself and waits for him to speak. "I won't tell you to stop looking, I won't send you off on a wild goose chase either, but I won't tell you where he is or how to find him."

 

Steve opens his mouth to argue, to plead his case, to beg even. But the desperation, the grief, the pain he's feeling is matched by the plea in a set of blue eyes. There is knowledge in those eyes, he can almost see himself in them. Being with someone who had lived horrors and not giving up.

 

"Not yet, Steve." He says and Steve is sure he can hear the kid's voice break. "He's healing, he's purging all of the rage and pain. He's ashamed of what happened to him, how they used him. He's trying to find the pieces he lost by tearing them down to the same sized fragments they left of him. He's always moving, peace disrupted and he goes looking for more."

 

"We can help him do that." Steve tries and the cold mask that sets in the young man's face tells him that's not the case.

 

"When we met up with him-" Steve goes to interrupt the look on flash in those eyes shuts his mouth for him. He's only been looked at like that by one other person, and that woman had shot at him. "Seeing you, as much as he wants to, it's only going make things worse and he knows that. He's remembering, slowly, but he tried to kill you in D.C."

"And that keeps coming forward when he remembers something from the stone age." Sam said with a breathy sigh, the struggle in Barnes' head becoming a whole lot clearer and new problems showing their faces for him to deal with.

"He won't." Steve says as his chest tightens.

 

"We don't know." Kennett says and he can tell it pains him to say that. " _He_ might not even _know_ he's doing it. He's scared and wants to make sure he's rid of every trigger, every override before he gets near you."

 

A tense moment passes where Steve feels tears prickle in his eyes, the fire's subtle roar is the only sound and its almost like it's whispering and cooing at them. Doing it's best to envelop them in warmth and sooth the three at the table. Steve feels Sam's foot against his under the table and nudges back. He wants strong arms wrapping around him, easing the tremors and swathing his shivering wheezing frame in comfort and solid body heat but what he needs is back in their apartment stuck in forties.

 

"Steve, he's trying to keep you safe. From them and what they made him." Kennett says and reaches tentatively for his hand. He lets him and the kid cradles his large hand in his smaller bony fingers. "He'll signal when he's ready to see you and we'll keep an eye out for him. Promise."

 

The promise left him floored, it sounded old and the strength of the commitment behind it made his eyes snap up from the weathered wood of the thick kitchen table over to a pair of green flecked blue.

 

"You do?" He said but he knew the kid, really he wasn't even twenty, could hear the questions hidden in those two words. He knew that Kennett was aware how binding his answer would be.

 

"The asset was their greatest success." He says. Steve thinks he's dodged the responsibility that he would not let Kennett shoulder alongside him if Steve didn't trust the kid. "Upstairs is their biggest failure. Wasn't supposed to live, they didn't know Морозник already had a foot in the grave."

 

He wasn't twisting away and hiding behind empty words designed to deflect. He was baring his soul and showing them they could trust him with this more than anyone else. Not just his soul but making clear that he _knew_. He knew what Steve felt, the kid's parent had been in Bucky's place. This kid would fight for his family as much as Steve would. "Not in the habit of going back on our word. Besides, Barnes has a plan."

 

"Besides kill everything remotely related to the years he's was thought KIA?" Sam says with a tiny twitch, minuscule one, on the left corner of his lips.

 

"He's still KIA to the general public, so unless you have a death wish, I'd be more specific." Kennett says with a sharp smirk, but their is no malice in his words. He's bantering. "His plan seems to follow any average vet's recovery strategy from what he's told me. He's on step one still, its just bloodier and with more explosions that your average vet's stage one recovery."

 

"Get moving." Sam says between the fingers he's been rubbing over his stubble marked chin and over his mouth, his other arm lays across his stomach and Steve looks up at him. "He's keeping himself busy as he deals with things, focusing on something and physical aspects to ground himself. Then he'll put in extra work on healing properly."

 

"We need to move. Over a hundred at the base, more searching terrain." The assassin's distorted voice buzzed from the helmet as they come rushing down the stairs. Looking at something on a tablet in one hand, a duffle bag on the other. A large backpack over their shoulders, efficiently packed and full of different things and few pouches sturdily fastened to the bag. "Four klicks and gaining. The snow should have covered our tracks."

 

"Gentlemen, while I'd've loved to supply you with a warm shower and a sturdy bed..." Tomas lets the sentence hang and the right corner of his mouth quirks up in an apologetic way but still smug.

 

They waist no time packing everything they can into the car. The kid opens the backpack Морозник had carried down so what looks like a shaved cat can crawl out. Steve doesn't comment on the fact that said terrifying hairless cat is wearing a blue hoodie with his shield printed on the back. He just keeps his eyes open and his gun ready in case who ever is after them finds them. His heart in his throat as he thought of Bucky somewhere in the cold hearing Hydra troupes rushing around the terrain.

Moroznik, he'd have to ask Natasha what that meant. It didn't sound like a name. Along the drive, he decides to piece together what he knows about these people and notices something that strikes him as odd. Both Kennetts had made it obvious not to disclose the older one's name or gender, he didn't even have a face for the moniker they had given him and Sam.

If they were protecting Bucky, the wanted to stay hidden and for that one of them had to stay in the dark. The kid probably handled intel and travel, so that left the field work to the older Kennett.

They make it to an old military base, Air force by the looks of the buildings, and bunker down for the night. He looks at the way the older Kennett moves and what he can get from the suit encasing a surprisingly agile body. He's reminded of Natasha, slimmer and probably with wiry muscle.

The way the black-clad figure interacts with Tomas Kennett, it reminds him of his mother sometimes.

As the assassin jumps off the truck and lands next to him with the last of their gear safely inside, Steve gets the barest hint of lavender, a fresh smelling and pleasantly sweet fruit that he can't quite place, and honey. There's a bright bubbly sent there too. It reminds him of Natasha's perfume, one she uses sparingly so he always notices it. But hers smells like peaches. This one smells has the slight tang of a different fruit.

He wonders if Kennett has long hair like her son or if she's cut it short for the helmet as his artist's eyes pick up on the lines of would be curves under the heavy dissimulating armor.

Steve's not surprised when he sees Natasha waiting there for him the next morning and their masked companion is nowhere to be seen. He walks in on Natasha painting the kid's nails while she says something in Russian and the kid rolls his eyes, throwing his head back with a long-suffering sigh.

 

"мой малыш" He hears Natasha say before she switches back to English. "It's not that big of a problem."

 

"Tell that to all the idiots who think it is." The kid says, eyeing Rogers standing the doorway. He does his best to look apologetic, "We're not talking about you but I hope you're not one of those idiots."

 

Before he can ask what, Natasha shakes her head and opens a bottle of clear polish and the kid offers his blindingly glittery nails over for inspection. They're black with red hexagons in different shades of red and he knows its all Natasha's doing. Her own are free off polish but as soon as she finished the final coat, Steve sees the kid reach for a tasteful robin's egg blue.

 

"Where's your mom?" He asks and Natasha raises an eyebrow at that before nodding. _Not bad, Rogers._

 

He only sees then that not everyone is privy to that information, he secured Kennett's trust and the kid's almost immediately. He's seen the woman kill and how well the kid handles knives, not to mention his ability to completely take down a homey looking cottage and turn it into a desolate shack. And blow up a Hydra base, his brain screams at him because it was him who had the detonator and the other Kennett was only a delivery system.

 

"She left a few hours after Tasha got here, around three." The kid says and Steve can only sigh. "She's probably caught up to Barnes by know, or will around lunch."

 

That explains why the surprisingly trusting woman left without saying goodbye, Steve would have hitched a ride whether she let him or not. She waiting until he was asleep and deep. As much as it pains him, she made the right call. It hurts, like a deep cut and it burns worse than bullets but if what she said was true. Bucky can't see him now.

 

"So what now?" Sam says as he pads into the makeshift kitchen, not batting an eye at the spread of nail polish or how carefully the kid's painting Natasha's nails. Almost instantly all eyes fall to Natasha and her eyes widen a fraction. Her mouth is slightly open and her brows knit together in what Steve now knows is in a mocking way, its good natured but he doesn't believe for one second that she doesn't have a clue.

 

" _I dunno_." She says with a minute shake of her head and tiny shrug all in one motion. "Ask _him_ , Kennett left him in charge."

 

The kid sends Natasha a glare and caps the bottle of clear polish. He doesn't even look up as he packs it all away and tucks it into the backpack the hairless cat had just jumped into.

Steve chooses to look anywhere but the backpack and avoided Sam's gaze.

His friend was on the verge of laughing. Someday he'll put that damn cat on his belly and let him wake up to that, see how he likes it.

 

"We head state side and monitor reports, provide extraction when needed, and keep an eye out for any threats." The kid says in an almost bored tone before snapping his head up and continuing. "We also start hording blankets and soft things, warm things, some form of instrument, things that will break with out causing too many injuries, things that won't break. Someplace with plenty of natural light, bullet proof glass and space, places to hide things, safe from snipers, and with multiple exits. He also needs to learn to trust doctors and medical or technical facilites in small steps."

 

The Tower," Natasha says as she inspects her nails. "Jarvis'll tell us if there are any injuries, panic attacks, and the like. Tony's already made the building a fortress in every way possible."

"EMP resistant?" The kid asks and Steve suddenly forgets that the kid isn't even close to being twenty. There is no way that kid could be twenty-one.

"Tested it last week." She says with a grin. "Stark wiped four blocks out, but the tower stayed up without a hitch. The power source has been relocated and has even more complicated safety features."

It took them half an hour to eat and pack everything into what resembled a Quinjet but was obviously Stark in design. Steve couldn't help but look at the frozen ground below and feel jealous of Kennett, even mad at her. But he shoved it all aside, no matter how much he wanted to bring Bucky home he had to trust the woman who had, in turn, trusted him with her life and that of her kid.

 Barnes wouldn't be the only one made into a weapon against their will. Not in this tower and not by a long-shot.

\-----  
  
Tony throws all caution to the wind when Jarvis announces that Captain Rogers is on the roof. He drops everything and runs out of the lab and into the elevator. Jarvis doesn't even comment on how no one has been able to get Tony out of the lab _for four weeks_ , he doesn't even offer to see how o start setting up the common floor and Steve's apartment to be comforting and relaxing as he can get it without help of the employees whether or not Steve came back with Sergeant Barnes, they wouldn't need a comforting environment. if Steve came back alone, Jarvis was all true link to join his master's his master in exile in the lab until Steve got some sleep should that happen.

Everything was clean he makes Dumm-E and U retreat hastily to their usual posts and locks down the entire floor so no one could enter unless they have Master Stark or Captain Rogers biometrics. Then his only important task,  mildly important, is fielding calls from master Stark’s apartment to  Miss Potts's phone.

  
Jarvis sent Miss Potts a reminder that she should take Natasha up on the sparring lessons. If and when they brought Sergeant Barnes home, Hydra would be after him and so would many different people both in the government and all the grid. It seemed like a good preemptive measure, without any confirmation to the text the A.I. began to draft a schedule. He could simply be deleted It should Miss Potts decline.  Jarvis liked Steve, and Tony has been erratic for weeks if Steve Being okay meant Barnes think safe and given us a safe place to recover, then he would do everything he could to make it happened. If anything it would probably help comma Burns wouldn't be the only one made into a weapon against their will.  not in this Tower and not by a long shot.

\-----

Polluted spring wind mussed his hair as he stepped out of the elevator door, he ignored how a fold-able garden chair leg smacked against his shin on his way to the helipad. Tony's already wet eyes searched frantically in what he could see of the Stark Sparrow jet he had started building right before Steve had left. He had taken a Quinjet and fixed as many design flaws and - Steve and Sam were back. Natasha was with them. He saw a head of black hair through the window and tried to compose himself, Clint's jaw was flexing meticulously as his folded arms across his chest.

The head of dark hair was too small to be Barnes's and too low, much too low.

Sam was the first to get out and Clint walked towards them, helping them unload after and easy smile a quick on armed hug. Tony stayed rooted to the spot, shaking minutely, shivering with nerves until he saw Steve's stupid blond head emerge from the jet with out a single scratch on that dumb tired and pain riddled face. Tony mentally counted how much of the super soldier booze he had been able to make and thought maybe the three bottles would be enough for the first week.

Steve said something to the kid who had climbed out after him and already had a cellphone out, a Stark phone, and calling someone. The kid went to talk to Natasha after a quick glance at Steve, who had was looking at Tony, looking more tired than the inventor had ever felt. Tony walked over and and placed an arm around the Captain's waist, guiding him into the elevator and leaving the others to sort themselves out. He let the doors close and kept his arm around the resolute man beside him, Tony could feel the tremors rushing through the man's body. The way the man's breathing started to hitch, becoming uneven and wet.

The elevator doors opened to Cap's floor and Tony wasted no time shepherding the tired Brooklyn kid over to the couch where he sat him down and wrapped them both in a plush blanket. When Steve tried pulling away Tony bit his tongue and guided the hulking man's tear glazed eyes and reddening nose to the crook of his neck. Tony carefully laid back onto the couch, resting his head on a decorative pillow Darcy had handed out last year and adjusted Steve so that the man could curl up on top of him. He rubbed endless circles into the man's twitching back and cradled the back of his head. For a long time, there was no sound other than Steve's uneven breathing and the muffled life of the city bellow.

Tony simply waited. His jaw mouth closed and silent, brown eyes unblinking as he gazed at the ceiling, and waited. It could have been two minutes, half an hour or five hours by the time Steve gave in and let the sobs shake his muscled frame. The broken noises, anguished cries, where tainted with shame and Tony only held him tighter. Trying with all his might to engulf Steve's larger frame with his warmth as he rubbed circles and spirals into the artist's shaking back, his other had massaging the back of his neck and carding fingers through his friend's blond hair. He didn't try to reassure his friend that everything would be okay, that they would find Bucky. Tony knew they could find a man matching the description of Sargent James Buchanan Barnes, but despite every scrap of research he did, the prospects of finding Bucky where not certain.

Instead, he let his hoarse voice melt away at the shame Steve still associated with crying, just like he did. He told his friend to let it all out, that he was okay and that it was good to cry. That Tony cried too, and he kept rubbing soothing patterns into his friend's back, mumbling all these things into Steve's hair.

 

Tony had no idea how long he spent keeping Steve company on the couch, but he didn't care the moment he saw Steve's usually tired face free of lines and tucked warmly against his chest. He smiled as he took in the sight of Steve's splotchy tear marked face, resting peacefully, his sleep-mussed hair sticking up in five different angles and falling into his face, his hand curled into a fist around Tony's drool and snot dotted Iron Maiden tee. Tony didn't care, he fixed the blanket around them and found a comfy spot for his head on the DIY throw pillow and decided to sleep. He was not gonna move until Steve woke up, not even if Bucky decided to waltz through the door. Steve slept worse than he did.

\----

"Ready?" She asked in English, it wasn't the British accent he had seen her use before in Helsinki when they thought they would be over heard. No, it was American, she had picked it up from him when they had efficiently burned away her hope to return to her hunger plagued but free life. That was a difference between Eleanor Kennett and the _Ellie_ he knew. Just as he knew that he could never be James Buchanan Barnes ever again. No, that boy had died the moment Sergeant Barnes saw a kid younger them him drop to the ground from his bullet. Then Hydra had killed Sergeant Barnes. And now the Asset was dying, slowly and methodically. A certain death, because Bucky was killing him. And Bucky was the only thing he could be with out his chest seizing up and everything going numb. Bucky was all three men, no one, and none of them all at once. Bucky was what had survived just like Ellie had been what managed to climb out of the mangled limbs and wreckage that Hydra left.

Bucky nodded and closed his eyes breathing in and letting out a shaky breath. This was the first bullet in the Asset's lifeless existence. He pulled his hands into fists and kept his eyes closed, trying to focus on the plan and gathering what guts he had. It had gotten real bloody.

"Nine to go." He heard her voice shake slightly and he opened his eyes to find her blond hair glowing with the light of the fire behind them. The had picked a total of ten smaller compounds to take out. "I can take care of the rest if you want."

"I can do a few more." He said and he wiped the sweat of his brow. "Then I'll go to ground. I just-"

"You need it, a way to control the mission imperative." She said as she passed him a water bottle from her pack. He nodded a took a swig. "I stuck to my last target as protection detail for a few weeks until I got it under control."

"Who was the target?" He asked, it had been months and the mission imperative was still trying to bring back conditioning and drag him to Serbia. "They had to be a real pain to get you to ignore it that quick."

"I dunno, you tell me." She said, lowering her eyes and fidgeting slightly. Picking at the blood under her fingernails and rubbing soot off her fingers.

The winter gear suddenly felt a lot heavier than it did just seconds ago and the cold crept into his lungs, the rattling breath sounding around him wasn't his own. He stared at the woman with wide eyes and lips hanging open slightly. _Oh god_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moving along with the fic. Great. Smutty scene in the next chapter. Yes, Tony is OOC here too and I'm not sure if he'll stay that way or if I'll bring him back in character.
> 
> Figure out the Russian bits yourselves or be patient, plot is plot.


	3. Cop This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve goes back home. Natasha finds something to call home. Bucky starts understanding what home means.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a feeling ya'll gonna love and hate this chapter, it was bitch to write. Just so you know. More OOC Tony, slightly less so by the end.

_"Nine to go." He heard her voice shake slightly and he opened his eyes to find her blond hair glowing with the light of the fire behind them. The had picked a total of ten smaller compounds to take out. "I can take care of the rest if you want."  
  
"I can do a few more." He said and he wiped the sweat of his brow. "Then I'll go to ground. I just-"  
  
"You need it, a way to control the mission imperative." She said as she passed him a water bottle from her pack. He nodded a took a swig. "I stuck to my last target as security detail for a few weeks until I got it under control."  
  
"Who was the target?" He asked, it had been months and the mission imperative was still trying to bring back conditioning and drag him to Serbia. "They had to be a real pain to get you to ignore it that quick."  
  
"I dunno, you tell me." She said, lowering her eyes and fidgeting slightly. Picking at the blood under her fingernails and rubbing soot off her fingers.   
  
__The winter gear suddenly felt a lot heavier than it did just seconds ago and the cold crept into his lungs, the rattling breath sounding around him wasn't his own. He stared at the woman with wide eyes and lips hanging open slightly._  
_\-------------_  
  
A shiver ran down her spine and the sheets rustled around her as she disentangled herself. Her bare feet touched the carpeted floor and her toes wiggled on reflex. A sleepy sigh ghosted from her lips as she stood and blinked away the wetness on her face. Quiet and slowly she padded towards the door, picking up a stolen hoodie from a nearby chair and slipped into the elevator in the mood for a midnight snack. She thinks it's Steve's, or Thor's. It's huge, her sleepy mind makes her eyes widen as she smiles a little as she makes a fuss about putting her hands in the large pockets. If she were in a better mood she would laugh and maybe twirl. She could fix something up in her own kitchen but it felt better to grab a snack from the communal kitchen. For all she knew there was bound to be someone there to keep her entertained and laughter to sweep away the last of nightmare chasing her.  
  
With her temple pressed against the wall of the elevator and her feet crossed at the ankle, she tried to remember the ghost chasing her and make sense of it. It was of no use and it left her feeling drained. Her fear was mounting and gripping her heart in it's claws, seemingly human hand that might as well be razor sharp talons. Worry was chilling her bones and hollowing out her gut. Her heart was heavy with it and there weren't too many people who could get her to speak. She couldn't bring this to Clint, he still had his own problems and for it to work he needed to be here. His family needed him more, and he needed them. As strong as their bond was, this was something that would only add to his problems. She'd tell him when they were both a little more stable. When the worry and fear didn't make her this dull.  
  
Her eyes brightened, opening slightly when she came out of the elevator and found Steve drooling on Tony's shirt on the stupidly large couch. Steve's face showed signs of crying and this was the first time she had ever seen Tony sleep soundly in weeks. She saw it as a win win, even if the men would be shocked and embarrassed as soon as they woke up to her presence. Ridiculous, physical contact was a highly recommended positive stimulus during periods of distress and grief. For people who weren't physically abused or unhinged, that is. Most days only Clint could touch her. He knew went to give her space. Thor did too. The Hulk was the only ones that could touch without getting knifed.   
  
Pretending to mind her own business, she crossed the room. Making sure to ignore the two waking men in the couch, putting on the guise of being sleepier than she really was and opened the fridge to find a gallon of chocolate milk on the overly crowded shelves. She chewed her lip for a second before deciding that she could do with a some baked goods and a blueberry muffin followed the milk, flanked by two banana nut muffins.  
  
  
"Nat?" She head Tony mutter after a slightly flushed Captain tried to apologize only to have Tony wave his attempt away.   
  
  
Natasha hummed around a muffin, it came out sounding like a grumpy mewl and Steve's shy quirk of his lips made her smirk in return. She tossed the blueberry muffin to Tony who caught it mid air and looked at her with a slight frown. "Threw it at you, technically not handing you stuff."  
  
  
Steve chuckled and accepted the other banana nut muffin and she went to make him a cup of tea, rolling her eyes when he got that gentlemanly look on his face. If she wanted to make him tea it was for her own benefit. Selfish reason, like the calming ritual. Tony's mug was set on the worktop before he could comment and she just smirked at him, getting around his aversion to being handed stuff was a nice ongoing puzzle. She had to find new ways everyday and she figured soon enough she could hand him things in everyday life without getting and adverse reaction. Clint would piss himself.  
  
No one spoke as they enjoyed their two in the morning breakfast. Steve had taken over the kitchen and started making waffles, getting an early start on what would be their normal Sunday morning feast.   
  
  
"He was there to bring me home, wasn't he?" Steve asked as he plated the fourth waffle and batted Tony's hand away. The inventor whined but went back to his tea, staring somewhere between the rim of his mug and the massive fridge.  
  
  
"Who?" She said, she knew who he was talking about but her mind refused to call the woman's image. Natasha felt comfortable as sleep still clung to her and fogged the nightmare.  
  
  
"You're contact." Steve sighed, tired but not angry at her or himself.  
  
  
"Partially." Natasha answered and took a sip of her chocolate milk through a straight bright pink straw. She swallowed and let the chill of the milk cool her discordant insides. "What did he say?"  
  
  
"They knows where he is, what he's doing, but won't let me near him." Steve said and Tony raised and eyebrow at that.  
  
  
"I'm guessing the jailbait is one part of they. Whoever the other part is, they're protecting him. Giving him the time and space to patch himself up until he's ready to come in." Tony deduced and Natasha clinked her glass with his mug. Point for Stark, he got it right. Tony gifted her with a small honest smile.  
  
  
"How can I contact this mystery person, send them some stuff if we can trust them." He said after a gulp of still steaming tea.  
  
  
Natasha shook her head and set down her milk, teeth aching a little at the cold thick liquid. "They'll contact you, depending on how Barnes is doing. I trust them enough to handle him but not enough to give tech too."  
  
  
Both me stole glances at her, concern clear as day on their faces and she cursed before asking Steve for a coffee. She was too tired to deal with the coming questions and craving the caffeine. With a large mug of coffee safely in her hands and sweetened to her taste, she looked at the two men and proceded to pour the remains of her chocolate milk into the steaming coffee. She mixed it well and took a sip, the chill in her bones falling and ebbing away as the sweet infusion made it to her stomach.   
  
  
"I dreamed he died." Her voice was quiet and even, the husky tone hiding the way fear had crept into it. "Somewhere with a snowy forest, fire behind them. They were dragging Barnes out of the wreck and-"  
  
Her voice caught in her throat at the images played themselves before her eyes. The nearly black pines against glistening snow strewn with soot and rubble, a roaring fire scorching a building and the trail of blood. The hushed grunts as Barnes pulled the woman the last few feet behind a snow covered rock, Barnes coughing around the smoke in his lungs as he sat down with his back to the smoking ruines, keeping pressure on a wound in his thigh. The ringing in her ears from a gunshot and the blood. It spread like a endless ink blot, vibrant red on pure innocent white flakes. Deep blue eyes on a crimson stained face, shocked and blank. _"Natasha."_

She heard the woman's animalistic scream mingling with Yasha's gurgling final breaths. A deep primal howl as she sat up and shot the monster made of smoking embers, warped flesh, and seeping blisters. Her sobs as she cradled Barnes's lifeless corpse where as clear in the dream as the scent of blood and cold.   
  
Natasha sniffled and wiped her face, she could smell the smoke and the burning flesh. The blood on the two people out there with out her protection. He had only ever called her Natalia, the use of the kind nickname made it worse. It showed affection. She swallowed around the lump in her throat and took a drink of her coffee, letting the warmth guide her back to control.  
  
  
"Was it-?" Steve asked, his arms wrapped around his waist in a gesture he had picked up from Bruce. Her head snapped up and she smiled at him for a second and shook her head.  
  
  
"No." Natasha peered into the depths of her mug and let her hands leech the warmth through the usually frigged ceramic. "Some thug, half dead and burned up. He shot Barnes in the back and she managed to shoot him in the head."  
  
  
"But he died, bleeding out in the cold." Her voice grew quieter and she couldn't keep the tears from gathering on her eyelashes, dripping down her face as he breathing grew shorter.  
  
  
"He said my name." The pain came through and a wave of embarrassment hit her hard. She was weak.  
  
  
She didn't hear Tony get off his stool, she only felt his arms guiding her head to the crook of his neck. One hand on the back of her head and the other rubbing between her shoulders. As much as he throws money at them, he knows what it's like to not be held when you need it. This is something no one but them were privy to.  
  
  
Tony had been the first to find Clint after a particularly bad nightmare of the invasion. When Natasha had gotten to his room, Tony already had Clint wrapped in a hug, whispering his name and reminding him of where he was. It wasn't until months later when they found out Tony did this because he did the same thing for himself when his panic attacks wouldn't let go and Pepper wasn't home.  
  
  
Without speaking, Steve opened the lower cabinets and rummaged around while Natasha took comfort in Tony's arms. She was still surprised that he was this open to comforting her. It was almost a certainty that he would hate her guts after the Natalie Rushman stunt. The clink of bottles sounded around them but Natasha could only focus on how warm Tony was and how good this felt.  
  
  
Rationally, being held like this would create a link to any previous memory -sensory or otherwise- of being held by parents. When upset or being carried off to sleep, one arm on your back and the other cradling your head. It was comforting and safe. As an infant there were only a handful of ways someone could drop you when being held this way, all of them deliberate or stemming from tragedy. This position was a shield, acceptance, and you could hide yourself in another person while they had their own eyes free to look for threats. Natasha found it was being able to hear another's heartbeat, their breathing, and the solid warmth that made it comforting. They bare themselves to you and shield you from the world with their own flesh. Her hands closed into fists on Tony's shoulder, bunching the shirt in her grip. _Don't drop me._  
  
  
Tony held on tighter and placed a kiss on her crown. He let his cheek rest on her head and he moved his thumb up and down.  
  
  
"Come on, Steve's making drinks." Tony said as he instinctively rubbed the chill out of her spine with a calloused warm hand and placed another kiss on her head. Natasha hadn't notice that she had pretty much folded in on herself to fit in his arms to compensate for the dissonant height of the bar-stool. He wiped the tears from her eyes with rough and warm swipes of his thumb and kissed her forehead. He grinned at her and she smiled back shyly, she was still shaky but her heart felt less heavy.  
  
  
Tony grabbed his mug and raised it towards the center of their little group, glancing briefly at Natasha and she took his queue to do the same.  
  
  
"To the breakfast club." He said and promptly laughed at his own joke while Steve snorted around his own mug. She only smiled, taking and sip and humming as the rich hot chocolate coated her tongue and the alcohol sent the cold running.   
  
  
"Cap, you're no longer an Avenger." Tony said after his taste, looking at the mug like it was some indecipherable riddle. "I can't have you dying out there, not when you make a Chocolate Raspberry Forest this good."  
  
  
Steve only raised and eyebrow at him and started handing out plated waffles and setting out the syrup and butter dish. They ate quietly, well as quiet as you could with Tony Stark at the table.  
  
  
"Really." He said as he pointed at his half full mug. "I only knew one person who made one this good and I never got the recipe."  
  
  
  
"Are those waffles?" A voice from the elevator sounded, they'd been eating breakfast one an off fo a few hours. No one dared leave the warm safety of the atmosphere surrounding the breakfast bar. They all turn to find a kid with a world's worst behead dressed in black skinny jeans, boots, and a tight blue hoodie.  
  
  
"Kid, it's Sunday, shouldn't you be sleeping in?" Tony said, he was testing him and the kid only blinked. Still too sleepy to be upset.  
  
  
"And it's seven in the morning, shouldn't you be drinking something a little less Irish." He said and plonked down next to Natasha where an amused Steve set a plate of waffles that were ripped to pieces shortly after and dunked in puddle of maple syrup.  
  
  
"We've been up since four." Tony mumbled. "I'ts closer to noon for us."   
  
  
"It's always five o'clock somewhere." The kid quipped back and popped another piece of waffle into his mouth. "Mind if I ask what's kept you up?"  
  
  
"Your mom." Natasha answered and the kid just kept eating, his bacon snapping in half and dunked in a puddle of syrup on his plate. Tony was waiting for the kid to shrug or glare at the spy.  
  
  
"She texted me a few minutes ago." He said, unfazed and Tony frowned at him. The kid only shrugged and snapped another piece of bacon in half. "She's with Barnes, he likes the bedroll by the way."  
  
  
"He accepted it?" Tony asked, a little disinterested.  
  
  
"Not sure what his reaction was. She just passed along his thanks." The black haired boy said and pulled out his phone, unlocking it and replying to a message with his syrup free pinkie finger. "Oh, they're in Oslo."  
  
  
"News?" Natasha said over her second Raspberry forest.  
  
  
"Blew up a base near the Hakkloa." Accent flawless. He stuck a piece of bacon and sucked on it, chewing on the end in his mouth lightly as he read. "Barnes has a few minor injuries and Mom tore up a chair for him. He dismantled the tank they almost drowned her in. They're both okay an on there way to undisclosed location to heal."  
  
  
The kid pushed his phone away and picked up another bit of waffle, the bacon having been eaten seconds ago. "Probably heading for Leipzig, Copenhagen, or Constanza. Who knows."  
  
  
"Why would they go to Romania?" Tony asked and swirled the contents of his mug. Steve had put him back on regular coffee for his own benefit.  
  
  
"The Asset had an assignment in Italy." Natasha piped up. "Pope John the first."    
  
  
"He killed a politician while mom slipped in a did the job. I think they were reprimand for switching missions like that despite the staggeringly clean success." The kid commented and picked up his phone again. "Hey, Mr.Stark can I sync my phone with Friday? I wanna get silent alerts, just in case."  
  
  
"Your mom killed the pope." Tony said and blinked twice. "Yeah sure. Wait what's your name, kid."  
  
  
"Thanks, not my mom. Adopted." The kid said and tapped away at his phone. "TJ."   
  
  
"Friday?" Tony said and picked up a waffle, biting off a large corner of the buttery fluffy heaven.   
  
  
"Tomas James, with a surprising lack of a surname. Formerly known as Tomas James O'Connor. Reported missing January 7th of 2009, presumed dead. Child of Tomas and Kendra O'Connor, attended Cate School in California from age four to eleven." The AI informed and then continued much to the kid's surprise. "Kidnapped by a military division attempting to weapon-ize mutants on his way home from a Mister Collins's home on January 4th at approximately four in the morning."   
  
  
"Your parents took three days to report you missing?" Natasha looked at him and the boy only shrugged.   
  
  
"He went to a private school with a 40,000 plus yearly fee and was on his way home from a boy's house in the middle of the night. At eleven." Tony said. "I went missing for days, sometimes got home two days later and my parents panicked and looked for me two days _after_ I got back."  
  
  
"Mom has a tracker on me." TJ mused and sipped his tea.  
  
  
"Nothing says parental concern like tracking devices." Steve mumbled and remembered how the woman had let potential enemies sit around with her son once they were in the cabin. He wondered how many bugs and cameras the woman had set up for that brief chat. Tony broke out in to a rib splitting laugh and the kid chucked a syrup logged bit of waffle at the inventor. The was something to be said for the teens calming disposition. Tony caught it easily with his mouth and the kid gave him half a grin when the inventor smirked as he chewed.  
  
  
"When's Sam waking up?" Steve asked and set a few waffles aside for his friend.   
  
  
"He's out cold. Barton gave him meds for something. His knee, I think." TJ said and kept tapping away at his phone before turning to Natasha as if he'd just remembered something. His eyes narrowed and plump lips in a pensive twist but said nothing. He shrugged and mutilated another piece of waffle before popping the smaller pieces into his mouth.  
  
  
Natasha sent a fond smile at Steve, who was growing a little concerned at the refusal for utensils the two shared with the redhead's contact. He found it endearing, he couldn't quite pinpoint why.  
  
  
"I like you kid." Tony said and dug out a little black card from his back pocket. Sliding it over to the kid before the raven haired teen could protest. "Get what you need, just bring back some bagels."   
  
  
The kid nodded and went back to his phone after it buzzed on the table for the seventh time. "Rumlow's alive."  
  
He spoke as if his phone had announced that if tomorrow Manhattan would have a surprise respite from the wintry clouds. Apparently, Rumlow being alive was as interesting as the weather report.   
  
Steve mopped up the last few strings of syrup on his plate and tried not to sigh.  
  
He did.  
  
But the man had survived being trapped in a ball of flame, after Steve and Natasha were done with him.  
\-------  
  
Bucky loved the fall.  
  
  
It was warm enough that he didn't need to worry about Steve catching his death or falling over frozen from a breeze. Every plant near them was dying or going to sleep until spring would allow them to bloom and assault his friend with allergies again, sneezing and coughing fits that led to asthma attacks much to often for his taste. The rain had also calmed. Meaning he could keep Steve dry and the risk of a cold that would turn into pneumonia wasn't ever present and at Bucky's back like a particularly handsy ghost. But, you never knew with Steve.  
  
He really hoped, he prayed for the first time in years, that it didn't rain and Steve didn't get pneumonia.  
  
There was another aspect of autumn that he loved, it was sitting on the fire escape during a warm sunny day and watching his friend lose himself in a drawing of leaves twirling in the air. Or children in the park, jumping from pile to pile. His Stevie added faint touches of color with the pencils Bucky had managed to snag a few weeks ago. The warmth of yellows, oranges and cozy auburn mingled on the edges of grey and black lines and shading of Steve's usual sketches. Sometimes the sketches had a mix of blues and greens where you'd expect warmer tones but Steve made it work somehow. He hated being color blind but to Bucky, it didn't matter. Steve's few colored drawings had a vibrant flare no one else could give them and mix of colors made them something out of a wild dream. It was like something out of a Lewis Carol fiction and pure science fiction. It was beautiful but that wasn't the only thing to his right that stole his breath away. The small smile on that pink mouth, the spark in those baby blues. A deep healthy pink blossomed on his friend's milky face, dusting his cheeks like the powdery pigments he had seen Steve use once or twice when Bucky had splurged on a canvas.     
  
  
"What?" Steve said, his voice a little higher and nervous. His friend didn't take his eyes off page, though his hand had stopped, pencil carefully poised a hairsbreadth from the page.   
  
  
The blissful sun was slowly sinking, just low enough to silhouette Steve in a fuzzy halo of warmth in the musty autumn air. The light played in Steve's eyes, making them glisten bright and lighting a few flecks of green only Bucky knew of. His tawny hair caught the light and it glowed around his big stupid head. The rays bounced of the windows around them and painted patches of blushing peach colored skin that faded off to milky white.   
  
  
Steve turned to face him and Bucky stopped breathing. "What is it, Buck?"  
  
  
The world grew fuzzy around them, bathed in that familiar warm glow and their surroundings blurred like watercolor paintings reflecting the scenery of a summer's day in a tranquil pond. Like the one Steve had dragged him to see a few weeks ago.  
  
  
He felt his body heat up slightly as he tried to form words, Steve's rosy lips were all he saw. Thin long and bony fingers reached out to him, cold from bad circulation and a cool wide palm was placed on his forehead. Steve's face drew closer and Bucky could feel his hot sweet smelling breath on his face. It smelled like apples.   
  
  
"Are you sick?" Steve said and Bucky swallowed around the thick feeling in his throat, he was sure Steve could hear his heart trying to crash it's way through his ribs.  
  
  
"You're warm."  
  
  
His gaze slipped from those teeth worried lips to the skin peeking out from the white collar of Steve's shirt. It was too big for him, it hung awkwardly and gave him a sneaky glance of of the soft warm skin and his friend's collarbones. Collarbones that poked out too on his skinny frame but Bucky wanted to lick and suck on them until Steve screamed.  
  
  
"Buck?" He heard Steve whisper and his eyes snapped up to the sea of rich blue. He could look at those eyes for years and still be amazed by them. The warmth and that spark they held. It didn't matter how disgusting Bucky was. Didn't matter how many dames he fucked to cry and burn these wants from his mind, from his heart. Like it ever worked, it just made that fog in his head thicker until all he could sense was Steve. He licked his lips impulsively, he could feel his palms go clammy as nerves raced through his stomach in a molten messed of want.  
  
  
Without thinking of how soft they looked, how red those lips where, Bucky stood up and dashed back inside their shitty apartment. He stopped when Steve called his name again and ran both hands through his hair as the 90 pound soaking wet firecracker stubbornly placed himself in his way.  
  
  
"Bucky?" Steve voice broke his heart. He could feel his jaw tighten as he let his teeth grind together, eyes cold with hatred and disgust at himself. Obviously, Steve thought the look was directed at him. 'Course he would.  
  
  
He was all wide eyes and confusion, worry and possibly hurt furrowed his brow. Please don't let it be hurt. Bucky didn't want to hurt Steve. His mouth was barely open as his friend looked for the right words to ask why he was being such an idiot. The breathless worry and pain in the blond's voice broke him, along with the shine in his eyes. A shine that had nothing to do with the joy he had seen moments ago while he sketched out a study on hands. His hands. And all the stupid punk had done was say his name again.  
  
Bucky's heart sank into the pool of fire in his gut and he crossed the space between them, intent to sooth his Steve's worry when he made the worst mistake of his life.  
  
  
They were so soft, and warm, chapped and plush against his own. Those pretty cheekbones felt like silk under his rough thumbs and that spun gold hair was so soft against his finger tips. He marveled at how Steve's strong stubborn jaw fit like a puzzle pieces against his palms. The surprised breathy sigh pricked his ears and threw his heart into a frenzy.  
  
He made to back up and maybe run down the street and keep running until he could maybe fling himself from the docks. Maybe. Maybe he'd just let Steve leave and let someone else beat him to death like the kid that had lived two floors up.  
  
As soon as he put no less than an inch between them, he felt cool fingertips cup the back of his neck and drag him forward as his mouth was nudged open with Steve's lips. He was lost.  
  
He wasn't sure who moaned first as he trailed his hands down Steve's neck, his chest where that stupid too big heart refused to stop beating, around the narrow but firm stomach to pull his best friend closer and up into the kiss. Steve was so warm and smelled of soap and clean and sunshine and _Stevie_. Steve fit perfectly against his larger frame and Bucky couldn't control himself when a shy tongue licked at his lower lip.  
  
  
The gentle glide of lips and roaming hands drove him wild as-   
  
  
His eyes snapped open and he tried to calm his panting breaths, warmth spreading through his frame and trapped in by the heavy blankets over him. Blankets he remembered tucking around the kid the night before. His mind swam with images of Steve breathless and hair tousled as they fought on the bridge, the way his suit had hugged his thighs and framed his hard abs, the vertical lines doing nothing to hide the narrow hips on the hellecarrier or back during the war. The memory brought on panic and disgust normally but now all he could see was how red Steve's lips got as he panted with exertion. Warmth pooled in his gut and his groin ached from arousal. It wasn't the first time he'd gotten hard once he broke out, but it was the first time he'd acknowledged that thinking of Steve did this too him. Weather it was dreams of the small fragile-looking firecracker back in Brooklyn or the muscled tall and determined man that dragged his sorry ass out of hell that first time or the second, it was always Stevie. His Stevie  
  
Slowly and with a little trepidation he let his flesh hand travel down his side and over his exposed hip, the shirt he wore to sleep had ridden up to his chest as he undoubtedly tossed and turned in his sleep. Sensory memory kicked and he swore he could feel Steve's bony cold hands trailing down his chest instead of his metal hand. A warm mouth closed over nipple and goosebumps erupted on his flesh as he let the soft suction and the graze of teeth drag a breathy sigh from hips lips. His fingernails bit into the skin around his hipbones and he gasped, eyes falling to half mast as cool fingertips played with his other nipple. The pebbled flesh growing sensitive and pulling quiet soft mewls from his throat, an obscene moan ran away from him before he could catch it as his hand finally encased his impossibly hard dick. It was hot and heavy in his calloused hand and he wondered if Steve's hands were the same way.  
  
The fragile thin body became the hard muscled physique he would try to sneak covert glances of during his days with the Commandos. Steve large hands, they'd always been big though they were slimmer before, running up his thighs and pulling him closer. Pulling him down the cot in their shared tent to kiss him and steal his breath, hips rolling against him, rubbing their cocks together and catching his moans with that pink mouth.   
  
He wondered if Steve would suck his lower lip between his and bite.  
  
A moan ripped through his throat as he clamped down on his own lip reflexively, his hand stroked faster and cool metal pressed against his hole. He wasn't even aware of his hand sliding around his leg and between his cheeks until a cool digit brushed the puckered ring of muscle. He pressed down on it and rubbed in circles with his flesh thumb matching the pattern on the head of his cock. It was too much and not enough all at once.  
  
He ripped his metal arm away from his ass and shoved his fingers in his mouth, sucking them as he wanted to suck Steve's fingers. Steve's cock. He groaned as he pictured Steve standing over him while he was on his knees, or maybe holding onto a headboard and shoving his dick in Bucky's mouth. Fucking his face until he came. He chocked back a sob and ran his tongue along his metal fingers, wondering what Steve would taste like. What his dick would feel like in his mouth, or in his ass. As quickly as that thought came his metal hand was already moving out of his mouth and down. He needed to know what it felt like, he wanted it as badly as he wanted to make his stupid punk smile like in those fuzzy memories.   
  
It didn't hurt, maybe because he was so gone with pleasure or because of how much spit he had been able to coat his fingers in. It was just strange but it felt so good, he slowly pulled out and back in, little by little until his metal finger was buried in his ass. It sent licks of pleasure up and down his spine, the air rushing out his lungs in little mewls and sighs. Nibbling on his bottom lip he added a second and it stole his breath as his nerve endings lit up, he could feel the pressure and warmth on his metal fingers, but not what he felt like, but that was okay. If Steve was touching him, he would be able to feel himself either. It only made it better, he could imagine Steve was doing this too him. He barely registered the precum leaking from his dick until his hand was so slick and it felt so fucking good he had to force himself to stay quiet.

He had no clue where Moroznik had gone, she could be right outside the door. Reading or cleaning her guns in the other room.

A bolt of fire and shame licked through his spine and his face heated up, he could be caught like this. His hands sped up and he turned his head to bite the pillow under his head and stifle his moans as a third finger joined the others. He could only think of being in the tent he has shared with Steve during the warm. Someone could walk in any minute and find them out, Steve's mouth on is cock and fingers buried deep in Bucky.   
  
His chest heaved as he lost himself in the pleasure of his fantasy, cheeks and chest flushed and a sheen of sweat coating his skin. The cool air biting at his already oversensitive nipples and pebbling them. Steve fucking him and anyone; Sarah Rogers, the Howlies, the Avengers, were nearby and could interrupt them. Overhearing them or maybe catching them in the act. He pistoned his fingers harder, faster, deeper and set a punishing pace with his right hand, moans and sobs catching in his throat as he bit the fabric under him so hard his teeth hurt. Steve's mouth leaving a trail of wet kisses and bruises down his neck as his nails raked down Bucky's sides, pounding into him and making it incredibly hard for him to keep quiet. That was the point after all, making Bucky scream. A delighted, sharp, loving, grin brushing against his vulnerable neck as he hit the brunet's prostate thrust after thrust. His legs where spread impossibly wide. Hushed sobs and whimpers mixing with the wet telling sounds of skin slapping against skin. He pictured Steve's warm body covering his, keeping him trapped and hidden from the world. His friend's deep, pleasure rough voice. 'Come for me, Buck.'  
  
A muffled cry sounded in the otherwise quiet room, broken and vulnerable but painless. It tapered to a groan as ribbons of viscous white painted his stomach and reached even under his chin. His legs where shaking, from the exertion, the blinding fire rushing through his veins and behind his closed eyes, and the cold air. He didn't remember peeling back the covers. His metal hand slipped from his ass with a slight hiss from his lips and he chooses to sacrifice a clean enough sock to wipe up the mess on his front. With sluggish grace, Bucky sighed and got on his feet as the after shocks died down. Studiously, he didn't allow himself room to think of what he'd just done. Everyone jerks off, several people probably beat off to the image of Captain America.   
  
That brought a grimace to his face, random strangers calling out his best friend's name as they finished. Well, he'd done the same thing. Was it better or worse that he actually knew Steve? They didn't have much privacy in their little apartment before he had been drafted. Steve and jerking off hadn't been separate concepts in the confines of the tiny one bedroom hole in the wall tenement. Not that space and privacy had ever been the only things that brought those concepts together. He let the flickers of memory run through his skull, it wasn't painful but it did make his chest tighten uncomfortably. He could practically smell arousal that was not his own and he groaned as slipped on some snow approved jeans and his favorite boots. He tugged on a hoodie and piled the covers back on his bed.  
  
He was more interested in the dream and tried to remember it as he walked into the bathroom. He knew it was a dream, sometimes his mind would stop giving him intel for a night and supply him with dreams. Nonsensical ones, wet dreams, and an imaginary world where he finally got better and got to live in peace. He frowned.  
  
Yeah.  
  
His dream life was a sunny apartment, with soft couches and coffee, books, baked goods and warm blankets.  
  
He shut off the tap and quickly dried off his hands. His reflection was frowning at him but his expression changed to shock and then contentment.  
  
He looked... better.  
  
The bags under his eyes weren't ass bad, his hair was clean and only sleep mussed. His skin even looked better. Well, of course, he got to bathe now. With actual soap. And Moroznik often spiked his bath with those oils and salts she liked to use, not that he ever asked the annoying kid. Not that he complained after the last base they'd totaled. Those fragrant oils and the salts had untied the knots in his back even without his companion rubbing between his shoulders like she insisted. She knew her stuff and he was not going to turn down her help.  
  
  
Upon leaving the less than horrifying bathroom, he came to one conclusion. He should have been up hours ago.  
  
The kid was nowhere to be seen, the coffee she had set out from him looked like it had sat on the table too long and the sun was high from the size of the shadows in the room. It was probably noon. His stomach grumbled as his pleasure loose, sleepy limbs carried him into the multi use room of the small cabin his companion had found. Maybe he'd scared her away? Oh god, he was never going to live it down.  
  
It felt more than awkward and shameful that the kid might have heard something. It felt like, he didn't know. It was there and he couldn't reach it just yet. He knew it was all kinds of wrong. It made his a bit queasy even, but more morally uncomfortable than anything else. And it was a huge sense of discomfort but not the bone chilling kind he's used to. It's like if his sisters had seen him naked or something but a little worse. The same feeling of flesh and blood seeing you in a compromising, very adult, and not at all scripture approved situation. His mind flashed with the brief imagined moment of a little girl in a night gown, blond hair messy and tumbling down her shoulders, pushing open the bedroom door as he lifts his head to look at her. He wonders if she had a nightmare or needs help getting to the bathroom. And then it clicks. He knows now.  
  
Yeah, he feels all kinds of wrong and he swore again because Steve.   
  
Right then, a hair of messy brown-blond hair walks in from the freezing but somehow summer outdoors with a dead animal on her shoulders. Bucky moves quickly to help get the impressive deer on the empty table and he hears the kid sniff.  
  
Not a sniffle from the cold, she's smelling him and his heart speeds up. He wills his face to stay blank and she doesn't comment.

He feels all levels of awkward and some shame. Then he stops caring cause he only human and she smells faintly like sex too, there is too much blood and forest clinging to her. It makes him feel weirdly protective but he lets go of that. There is no one for miles and she was an adult now. But there were dangerous people living in the woods, there could be a small enough Hydra bunker around. God, his brain is a mess. Why would he even think that?  
  
The glint of his metal arm catches in the noon sun and he remembers why. An ugly sadistic little shit on a mission, he was part of the team assigned to watch him. Bucky had shot him on some then forgotten principle and no one had reprimanded him. Same thing with the another moronic shit for brains cunt in '73. That time one of the guards had smiled at him.  
  
He had killed guard dogs, women and children, just three but that was already way too much, but he still had some morals left. Hyrda tried to carve them out along with himself but they couldn't take all of them. For that, he's happy. Even if he feels slightly worse than before.  
  
"What's in your head." She asks and he almost doesn't answer. He could just carry the coming conversation away with a joke or five. The look on her face tells him it's not an option and he sighs. She's almost as bad as Steve. Almost. She was too young when they started, she lost more than he did. She didn't have much to begin with. So somehow gestures and micro-expressions of his own have seeped in. Not like he doesn't have some of Steve's mannerisms.  
  
It makes him feel a little fuzzy inside. Some parts of him are out there, outside of himself. Permanently, because he won't let it be anything but.  
  
Like the way she eats anything she can tear to pieces or how she rolls her too blue eyes. She's jutting her chin out at him, defiant and cocky. Yup, that's him. He knows that look and Steve's drawn it before so he knows what it looks like when it's pointed at you.  
  
"You called me something." He has to be sure. He can't have these feelings and not be sure they're just his fucked up brain messing with him. "I thought you were hallucinating and the programming was stretched thin."  
  
"That happened a few times." She said and she sucked her lip between her teeth, nibbling before letting it snap back into place. That's him too, from before the wipes too away his charm. "The SHIELD base with the grenade?"  
   
"Yeah." He supplies, picking up a knife and starting to skin the animal she brought in. "You scared the fuck out of me. Made the programming glitch like crazy."  
  
There is a beat of silence, filled by the sound of a knife separating pelt from meat. He doesn't have to look up at her to know she's embarrassed. He does anyways and registers the shock. She's embarrassed, delighted, and baffled. Its more emotion than he's seen on her face in a days.  
  
He doesn't let the silence stretch any further. "You called me something but I'm not sure I'm remembering right."  
  
Its a lie and they both know it but he needs the confirmation. He needs to know the crisp and crystal clear panic drenched memory, that somehow lights a spark in his chest, isn't a drug fueled hallucination. It's not, but he needs to hear it from her.  
  
She says it so quietly, a smile too big and bright it threatens to cut her face in half. Her voice is quiet but it roars in his ears and a block of ice tumbles away into the ocean.  
  
He feels warmer and they set about skinning and portioning the deer in a comfortable silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think we're good here.  
> comments fuel my keystrokes.


	4. As You Were.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be. As a friend, as an old enemy.  
> Sweet turns to sour. 
> 
> This chapter has been heavily edited because I’m a colossal fuck up. I screwed the time line so if you read this chapter in between August 15th and 23rd, contgrats. You have spoilers.  
> Sorry! Warning: Dehumanization thought patterns, torture, and brief description of Non-con near the end. Very brief.

 

 

 _It’s a lie and they both know it but he needs the confirmation. He needs to know the crisp and crystal clear panic drenched memory, that somehow lights a spark in his chest, isn't a drug fueled hallucination. It's not, but he needs to hear it from her._  
  
She says it so quietly, a smile to big and bright it threatens to cut her face in half. Her voice is quiet but it roars in his ears and a block of ice tumbles away into the ocean.  
  
He feels warmer and they set about skinning and portioning the deer in a comfortable silence.  
\--  
  
Sam scowls as Natasha tries to set Steve on another date. This time with a pretty brunette from PR, not only is the brunette too enthusiastic for someone like Steve but it's also the worst time to suggest a date with anyone. Steve's feeling rejected. Barnes doesn't want to see him and Natasha is well meaning but she's pushing Steve towards people who want to see Captain America. The flat, dim, painful failure of what was supposed to be a decent hard pass does it for Sam.   
  
He's taking Steve out tonight.   
  
They'll hit up this bar he discovered a few nights back when he felt like he could move without hydra fist shaped bruises lighting up his tender very much human flesh. Mingle or just sit in silence and have a beer. Maybe Steve will meet someone, maybe he won't. Right now all Sam wants is to get Steve out of the Tower in some place where he isn't remind of being Captain America and he can be just Steve. Sam might have gone on a man hunt world tour with this guy for months but he had rarely gotten to see Steve, it was all Cap. It wasn't just for Steve, Sam was being selfish.   
  
He wanted to get out the Tower and have Steve all to himself. No Natasha setting him up on dates, no Clint crashing movie nights, no Tony jumping out at them with random questions and getting all weird and emotional when Sam least expected it. No Rhodes making him feel tiny and insignificant, all the while ogling his friend. Nope. The only one Sam wouldn't mind right now was Banner, but he was off somewhere in the middle of nowhere  
  
He caught Steve wallowing in the apartment they shared, because Steve felt having a huge apartment to himself was a waste. Sam wasn't complaining. After being glued to the man's side for this long, living alone felt all kinds of wrong. Sam didn't even spare the puddle of woe on the couch a second glance and picked up his jacket, tossing Steve's blue leather jacket right in the blonde’s face.  
  
"Come on." He said and tilted his head towards the elevator with a smirk. Steve looked confused and Sam just chuckled under his breath. "Bustin' you out."  
  
Steve raised his perfect blond eyebrow at him and Sam gave him a look. He didn't have time for this, he didn't want the other's crashing their night out. Sure it was childish and stupid maybe, but he wanted some time with his friend outside Stark's compensation piece and it would do the blond as much good as it would Sam.  
  
Steve tugged on his jacket and followed him to the elevator without a word, only giving him questioning glances when Sam kept looking over his shoulder and quickening his pace.  
  
Steve had one foot in the car, ready to sit down in the passenger seat when it happened. Sam was already behind the wheel of their nondescript slightly upscale dark grey car.   
  
Sam whined and for a moment Steve was confused. Sam could tell by how he hesitated and it was all the man needed to pull the Captain into the passenger seat and take off before Clint could walk over to them. The Para-rescue programmed the car's autopilot for the remainder of ride out of the massive garage and shot a quick text to Clint.   
  
"Need a drink with someone I met before all this crazy. Steve needs air too."   
  
Clint said he didn't mind, he had just come down to help Natasha with shopping bags.  
  
"Next time? Promise as much tequila as I can buy."  
  
He got a page full of smiley faces. Okay, so he was buying tequila next time. His phone buzzed again. Vodka too, apparently.   
  
Sam switched off Friday's control over the car, thanking the AI for not notifying Stark and blended into traffic effortlessly. It took him all of fifteen minutes to get from the tower to the little bar in Greenwich. Okay, maybe closer to seventeen but traffic had been blessedly non-existent. Steve looked at him, a little shocked and maybe even a scared. Before he could open his mouth the super soldier spoke.  
  
"Am I that obvious?" He said with that shy voice that belonged to a man much smaller than him. Frustration and a sense of failure clear in how he looked down at his thigh, Sam was all but waiting for him to start picking at the stitching on the dark grey leather seat.   
  
"Nah, just like this place." He said with a smile. He hadn't known Steve liked men but, hard to miss now. The blond was incredibly nervous. "Look we can head back to the tower or go somewhere else if you want."  
  
"I just haven't been to one of these bars since the '30s." Steve said as he smoothed his hair down self-consciously.  
  
"The place is discrete, the owner knows the spotlight a little too well." Sam says with an easy smile that has Steve's heartbeat easing up a couple beats. "He doesn't like reporters sneaking in or stalking his windows."   
  
As soon as the door opened, a small rush of sound hit the two Avengers. Sam turned to look at cap behind them as the voices in the bar chanted with the music. "Sex, Sex, Sex, Sex!"  
  
Steve only shook his head, looking down to hide the tiny smile that grazed his lips. He kept it to himself that he was in complete agreement with the lyrics of the punk-ish song, it was the reason he turned down Natasha's constant match making. People had lost what romance really meant. Now it was a means to an end and nothing else. That, coupled with the fact that his main focus was returned to Bucky, didn't leave with him with much time or even the desire to see anyone.  
  
Despite the initial outburst, the atmosphere of the bar was quiet, a soft lulling buzz of conversation and the soothing music. The lights were low enough to make the hardwood and various shades of green in the bar cozy and warm. There was a small stage tucked up near the far wall, a piano stood to one side and there was a simple chair to the right of the mic stand proudly taking the stage center.  
  
Steve felt nostalgia creep on him, the bar was extremely familiar. He looked to Sam who was grinning at him knowingly as he was guided in. He ordered two whiskeys and one was promptly set in front of Steve even though it had no effect. Something Sam knew. Not wanting to waste it, the blond spared his friend a look and took a drink. It was good, he caught the label on the bottle used by the bartender and felt nostalgia. This same whiskey was one Bucky had always wanted to try, a glass cost 32 cents. They could get maybe three pounds of hamburger meat with that money.  
  
The Calvert American Blend is knocked back with a slight wince and a pleasant burn in his gut that's gone too quick and won't hit his blood stream. For a while he and Sam are quiet as the bartender dispatches drinks with ease and leaves them with the bottle, on the house. A quick smile of too sharp teeth and flicker of light reveal blue skin that's almost paper white and nearly Elvin facial features. Steve catches sight of a tail picking up a white cloth as the bartender begins to wipe some glasses from a rack. The broken spade on the quick flash of that prehensile tail was embedded in Steve's memory whether he wanted it there or not.   
  
He briefly wondered if the kid had some tech from Xavier's school to hide his mutation or if that was his gift, shape-shifting. Sam next to him seemed non-pulsed as he poured another drink. He turns to his friend, who glances at the stage every now and then. A woman with dark curls in a red dress is singing a in a lush voice. Steve can see the freckles on her dark skin even from the bar, the small smile on her lips as she trills tenderly. He's itching for a sketchbook.   
  
"Gonna ditch me already?" He asks and Sam turns to him with a raised eyebrow and then a shrug.   
  
"Not my type. She's working the crowd too well."  
  
As if on cue he sees the woman, singing as she hits all the right keys on the piano, arch her back and her eyelids flutter close. Lips parting slightly, or exaggeratedly since she needs to be seen from the stage. Its inviting and very tempting, he's right. She knows how to work a stage and she's got the crowd eating out of the palm of her hand. Then it hit's Steve, he's remembering Dolly. The spirited gal he'd drawn in the St. George one night, she had worn a fitting red dress and nearly no makeup. Bucky was playing the piano while she sang until the tenants and dancers where breathless with awe. Curly dark hair framing her heart shaped face, a trace of red on her plump lips and a tender spark in her honey colored eyes. The dusting of freckles on her smooth skin had been Steve favorite thing the draw for a week straight. She had been his first kiss. He remembers being heart broken when she told him they couldn't go steady. Of course he wasn't a catch, not by a long shot, and there was so much wrong with him.   
  
He'd never forget how she stared him down and told him to get his head out his ass. She called him wonderful, any girl would be lucky to have him and dumb as dirt if they let him slip away. She had used his full name too, all but yelling that there was nothing wrong with him. It was everyone else that was screwed up. He found himself telling Sam about Dolly, Dolores Fletcher and how she sang.   
  
"My great aunt's name is Dolores." Sam said with a smile. "She sang at my mother's wedding and sings lullabies for every kid in the family."  
  
"We used to call her Dolly, she moved away before Bucky shipped out." Steve said as he looked at drink. He had lost everyone in the span of a week. The few friends he shared with Bucky had enlisted or were drafted, Dolly moved away, Miss Williams was sent to a nursing home. In the end it was just Steve and Miss William's cat that ended up with Bucky's little sister once he went away too.  
  
"Steve." Sam said and glanced at him from the corner of his eye, there were flecks of honey in his eyes and Steve had never noticed.   
  
"Sam?" The blond asked, slightly puzzled.   
  
"Did you fondue with my great aunt?" Steve nearly choked on his whiskey and Sam went from mildly pissed off to concerned in a flash.  
  
"No!" Steve hissed and looked around, his coughing fit had caught a few stairs and the bartender wordlessly handed him a glass of water. Steve thanked him on reflex and took a few sips. "I didn't sleep with your great aunt. She was a really classy lady, I wouldn't do that."  
  
"Oh so you only go for the sleazy ones?" Sam said and Steve felt a blush creep up on him.  
  
"No, damn it. Sam." He said and rubbed his eyes. He knows he blushing. "I respected her too much to even ask for a kiss. So she kissed me first."  
  
Sam gaped at him and then his mouth closed and he gave an ugly snort. "You're surrounded by women with bigger balls than yours, Rogers."  
  
Steve conceded, his mother, Peggy, Natasha, Pepper. Even Sharon. And now Natasha's contact. "Keeps life interesting, doesn't it?"  
  
His friend only hummed and his attention flicked back to the stage a nervous little sandy haired kid started strumming on his guitar while another guy with a tambourine struck up a fast paced song and pink haired girl kept rhythm on a Cuban box. The atmosphere of the bar changed a little and couples started to sway, some snuggled closer in booths while others decided to forgo subtlety and sat in another's lap.   
  
By the time the three where done, Sam was looking a little off. He had gone somewhere in his head and there was a sad smile on his face.   
  
"Bucky went for the sleazy ones." Steve blurted out as he topped off his glass. "Hell he went for everyone."  
  
"Well he had the right idea." Sam said as he stole the bottle from Steve. The blond gave him a quizzical look. "Make love, not war."  
  
"I guess, he would have started a war for me-" Steve abruptly stopped that train of thought. "No, he would've have won the war I started."  
  
"If someone had told before all this," The man waved his hand around in a vague gesture to encompass their last Hydra hunt. "That you're a mouthy little shit and got into more fights than you could handle I wouldn't have bought it." Sam's words where a little slurred and Steve took the bottle back, making a show of nearly filling up his glass.  
  
Steve couldn't help but laugh at that. Sam's voice cut it short though. "Why don't you tell Nat?"  
  
It caught him off guard and Steve didn't really have an answer. "Not that you're bi, not if you don't want to. I mean that you're not interested, you got someone already."  
  
The blond was baffled and Sam was probably drunk. Steve just kept looking at Sam, not needing to ask the question because his friend already knew.   
  
"Barnes, man." Sam said as rolled his eyes and took polished off his drink. "Look I'm a counselor but there is only so much I can take. You and Nat, gotta stop. I'ma yell at her if you don't spill."  
  
Even drunk Sam was able to read him like an open book. "Look you don't have to tell her it's Barnes. Just tell her you found someone who gets you and you're taking things slow."  
  
"She's gonna have questions." Steve said and played with his glass, twisting it and watching as it caught the dim lights of the bar. It came as no surprises the he was just as transparent to Sam. "Questions I don't want to answer, but I feel like if I don't answer them though, I'm kind of answering it, you know?"  
  
"Talk to Sharon about being your beard?" Sam said and shrugged, Steve wondered if it was about time to head back. The bar was getting a little empty and some people were beginning to look and whisper to each other excitedly. "Or, y'know. Juss tell Natasha that you're workin' up the nerve to ask 'em out?"  
  
"Think that'll work?" Steve said and wondered how solid Sam's advice would ring in the morning.   
  
"It's you, man." Sam said and Steve couldn't help but feel a bit insulted. Then again it was him, some parts hadn't grown with the serum. His confidence when getting a date was one of them. "Just draw my auntie Dolly a few times and leave it somewhere she'll find."  
  
"And, we're going home." Steve said and Sam made to shake his head but then nodded. The whiskey had hit a little harder than expected.   
  
"You're driving." Sam said and handed Steve his keys. The bartender looked at them quizzically and Sam closed his eyes and extended his hand. "It's cool. He can't get drunk."  
  
The bartender nodded and pushed the bottle forward, "Take it, boss is strict about opening Calvert. Treats it like wine, once opened it can't sit."  
  
"How much do we owe you?" Steve asks and a pair of grey eyes smile at him.   
  
"On the house, Captain." He said and shrugs. "Small thank you for your service. Both of you."  
  
"You give vet's free drinks?" Sam asks with a little trepidation as Steve takes the bottle.   
  
"We've got lists from AA, NA, and the VA in the area." The bartender said with a grin. "Our own too, we set anyone on the list with non-alcoholic until they get with it or leave. Boss's orders."  
  
"I love this place." Sam says and smiles at the bartender. "That Hammond kid did good."  
  
"I'll tell 'em you said that." Bartender replies with a smile as Steve thanks him again and leads Sam out of the bar and back to the car. Sam's asleep five minutes into the ride back home. He only wakes up when Steve nudges his shoulder and they ride the elevator discussing the owner of the bar. TJ Hammond had been in rehab and Sam had had him in a group back in DC made up of Vets who needed NA and civilian NA goers.   
  
Now the man had two bars and something called a gastro-pub that worked with NA, AA and VA centers. Sam's center was working to start a partnership with diner the president's son was working to set up in DC. Staffed by Veterans and with shifts to help them reintegrate. Needless to say Sam was proud of the guy. Steve was a little unsteady on his feet when Sam showed him a photo of TJ, he looked so much like Bucky when they were younger. Before Steve could ask any questions Sam had started drooling on a couch cushion.   
  
Steve threw a blanket over him and left him a sports drink with aspirin and a bucket just in case.  
  
....  
"мамуля, we need to go shopping."  
  
  
Natasha startled and choked on her drink, sputtering as the alcohol burned her throat. She turned to look at the kid with wide eyes while Tony erupted into another peel of laughter and Steve kept his amused grin to himself.  
  
  
"Not for me, we need to set up a room for Barnes." The kid clarified and Natasha sighed, it was odd seeing the spy this relaxed. After the night she had it was expected.  
  
They were having some of Steve's hot cocktails, again. In truth they had never really stopped. Thor was still in London, Bruce was reading quietly with a non-alcoholic version to Tomas's right. Having chosen to sit next to the kid to put at least one person between Natasha and himself, he knew it was childish but he felt the need to distance himself from the way he looked at her.   
  
Tomas had settled for tea and he tapped away at his phone like any normal teenager. He seemed on edge though, and it made Tony's eyes narrow a fraction. Sure he'd seen plenty of agitated people in his line of work, before and after he'd had a car battery plugged into his chest. But this looked like someone who was trying to keep cool while a full scale battle raged on outside their window and their side was losing the fight, someone who was partially succeeding and throwing quips and eloquent haughty insults.  
  
Oh.   
  
Well that's creepy.  
  
Tony immediately picked up his tablet and went to seek refuge in the partially finished schematics for his latest project. Realistic looking androids where fun to design but he'd made the Iron Legion already and now the only challenge was mimicking muscle movements under a hyper-realistic layer of synthetic skin. Yes, focusing on the bio-mechanical facial anatomy for his clumsy robots would become much more rewarding than freaking out about a kid that vaguely reminded him of Thor's insane little brother.  
  
So much better. The Raspberry Forrest in his mug was better too.   
  
It took a little while but he eventually shook the sense of familiarity until he looked over to where the kid was sitting between Bruce and Natasha to grab a bagel. The cocktail was gone and Steve had set a coffee in front of him, he wanted an onion bagel with cream cheese to go along with it.   
  
The kid was flipping a knife between his fingers with ease as he looked at his phone. Tony noticed how the knife was kept away from everyone but Cap still eyed it as cautiously as Tony did.   
  
The knife was short and it was more like a metal square with one end stretched into a blade while the handle was simply silvery engraved metal. Tony got a look at the pommel. It was just a dulled triangle with a point that could cause some very painful damage but no punctures. He'd seen this knife. If fact he had the same knife in this workshop under lock and key in a safe that only opened to his bio-metrics and was entirely made of reinforced steal. He had been messing with it last week and knew he put it back in the safe.   
  
He'd have to check if it was still there.  
  
"-at me like that." A voice said and Tony blinked, his brown eyes fixing on the kid's face. The smile sent a shiver through Tony for entirely logical reasons that didn't make him a creep but creeped him out far more than he was comfortable with. He'd fallen asleep in this guy's presence and he'd known the kid was good with knives and almost as stealthy as Natasha.    
  
"Huh?" He said as he blinked and focused on the kid in question. He took in the long black hair and those pale eyes. Yikes. "Oh, nothing. Just genius brain doing genius stuff."  
  
The kid looked at him and for a second Tony wondered if he hadn't lied as well as he thought he had.   
  
"Also that thing you do with knives is distracting." He added as gesticulated with his free hand and then snatched a bagel with little dark caramel bits dotting it. He quickly sliced it in half as pale eyes looked him up and down. Without a care he slathered more cream cheese than he had meant to but who cared. It was heaven as bit into it and he chewed a little too loud as the cream cheese and doughy goodness jammed up his teeth.   
  
"What?" He said around a mouthful, feeling a little self-conscious about the chewing.  
  
"Nothing, just super spy protege brain doing super spy protege stuff." The kid countered as he sipped his tea, "Also the alarming amount of cream cheese you eat is distracting."   
  
Tony swore he saw Bruce smirk and hide it behind his book. Clint squawked an ugly laugh in the rafters Tony had built in for him. The things he went through for these people and they laughed at him when a toddler sasses him.  
  
Steve pretended to be unaffected and simply kept reading the paper on the other side of the breakfast bar, tucked between a cutlery drawer and the kitchen sink. Small miracles.  
  
For a moment Tony wondered if this was what he was like when he was younger, care free and ignorant to the world shattering truths that would come up later in his life. When his only problems were parent related and the pressure of those vultures that passed a his parent's high profile associates. He spared his tablet one last blank look and then pretended to stare off into the distance as he regarded the kid.  
  
He was joking with Natasha about something in Russian and it scared Tony a little because he was pretty sure he heard the words murder and knife collection. Then he caught fossil, face, and explosion. It was mildly alarming that a kid was finding blowing up a building with people still inside so amusing, even if it was a Hydra base where they had tried to Winter Soldier their very own nonagenarian world war two vet.     
  
He took in the smooth face and the not quite absent traces of baby fat. Not a single sign of facial hair or a nick from a razor. He wasn't even old enough to shave and the kid had probably seen more dead bodies than Tony ever wanted to think about.   
  
Thankfully, Thor stumbled in with is hair still pillow shaped and beamed before he loudly greeted the team. The thunderer had decided to take a nap and had only returned to the land of the living four hours later. Tony wondered if their resident god even did anything by halves. He didn't, simple slightly genetically altered human that he was. So why would Mr. Space Viking Prince?  
  
No one missed the way his face fell and then rearranged itself into an even bigger and brighter smile. Tony's sleep deprived brain was about to scream for a pair of sunglasses.  
  
"Friend Tomas!" Thor called as he approached the group, "It pleases me to see you've joined us for another meal."  
  
Okay, so Thor liked the kid. Nothing new, Thor liked little kids and Tony felt bad for Jane because chances where that Thor would want around five of his own running around Jane's lab. Absently Tony wondered what it would be like if there were mini-Jane's and mini-Thor's running around. Unbidden, the image of a smaller bright eyed image of himself and tiny little blond girl with big bright eyes poking at circuits and motors assaulted him and, no. Tony reached for a gulp of coffee to hide a frown. He'd make a terrible parent. Sure it was fun to play at being Dad with his team but he would be a terrible parent. Didn't have anyone to learn from anyway.   
  
Natasha's contact seemed to have done a decent job, despite the kid’s stabby preferences. Who was he to judge about weird fixations anyway? He liked blowing things up and building robots.  
  
"It will be the last one, sadly." Tomas said and passed a folded piece of paper to Natasha. He was frowning at his phone, Tony didn't like that look.  
  
"Trouble back home?" Clint said as he reached down to grab the grilled cheese Cap was offering. "Oooh, pepperoni. Pizza sandwich."  
  
The obviously fake cow eyes he made at Steve where complete with a wobble of his lower lip. Tony had to exert maximum effort not to roll his eyes and keep quiet.  
  
"Moroznik found a large base and needs an extra pair of eyes to secure a perimeter around Barnes." He said and drank down the rest of his tea in a single go.   
  
"They're not blowing Hydra sky high together anymore?" Tony quipped and accepted the second cup of coffee Steve handed him. He caught the blonds eye and tried to convey as much calm and reassurance as he could.  
  
"Barnes doesn't need it anymore, it seems." Tomas said as his frown deepened. "Moroznik is calling in the lot of us for this one. The idiot going in alone while we keep Barnes safe."  
  
"When will you depart, friend?" Thor said, his brow furrowing as he regarded the teen.   
  
"Soon as I can, the base is active." Tomas said with a sigh and made to leave the breakfast bar.  
  
"I shall personally escort you to your fellows," Thor began and gripped the tiny human's shoulder.   
  
"Wouldn't a jet be safer?" Steve finally spoke and added at Thor's hurt look. "I don't think you'd drop him, Thor. It's just that it can get really cold."  
  
"I'm used to the cold." Tomas said, "Besides a jet would draw to much attention from anyone wandering about. Drop point is in a wooded area, but this close to a base… I'll meet up with Moroznik in a cabin and the others are already stationed near the Sargent."  
  
"Well met, Tomas." Thor said and grinned at the smaller man. "When shall we depart?"  
  
"See you in five?" The boy said as he stood and went to the elevator.  
  
Thor nodded and accepted a coffee from Steve with a jovial grin. A grin that dissipated as soon as the elevator doors shut.   
  
"Care to share, Sparky?" Clint mused from the rafters. He was lying in his stomach and his head poked out from atop the steel perch.  
  
"He reminds me of someone I knew when I was a boy," Thor's voice was never quiet but Tony guessed this is what silent and miserable sounded on the Crown Prince of Asgard. "He died before his time and I never got to ask his forgiveness over something I did."  
  
The room was quiet until the elevator chimed and they quickly pretended that nothing had happened. Tony would bet his latest suit that they were all thinking the same thing. In fact he typed up a quick request to Jarvis to set some contingency plans in motion. As soon as Tomas reached the center of the room while Thor inhaled his last poptart, a Legionary flew onto the deck and set down a duffel bag.   
  
"Electronic perimeter set it around your hidey hole and no bogeys get the jump on you." He said as he picked up the bag and the Legionary flew back out. "Set in your buddy's bio-metrics and anyone else gets fried. Ours are set and yours too, instructions will be sent to your phone."  
  
The kid looked at him with an awed and disbelieving look and the mask slipped back on before Tony could register anything else. The cocky smile was back in place as the other's said their goodbyes.   
  
Natasha went directly for a hug and whispering things in his ear that left the kid shocked at first but he only buried his face in her hair and held her tighter. When they parted they were both a little teary eyed and Tony wisely kept his mouth shut. He enjoyed having all his limbs intact. 

Steve gripped the shorter man’s shoulder and shared a small smile with him, “Stay safe, Kennett. All of you.”

“I’ll try my best, Captain.”

“Steve, call me Steve.” The Captain’s face was a strange mix of worry and pride. It baffled Tony and gave him feelings.

“Tom, then.” The kid said and Tony did have to be Natasha to know that the pipsqueak was floored about getting on first name basis with Captain America. He suspected it wasn’t for the usual reason though.

The raven haired teen made his way to the landing pad and Thor whisked him away, face tucked in the thunder’s neck and molding himself into the Prince’s grip as naturally as breathing.

Tony needed to consult Jarvis on that knife.  
....

Twenty-four hours had passed. Thor had been back for seven since he’d stopped by at Jane’s, who was still in London.

The knife was an identical match.

....  
Forty-eight went by and Tony wondered how he hadn’t bugged the kid’s phone. He hadn’t been able to sleep and was rapidly becoming a ball of nervous energy.

Thor had gone to check the drop point and found it completely vacant. They had no way of locating the kid. Still they were within the seventy-two hour check in Tomas had sworn to meet.

...

Eighty-four hours passed and despite being sleep deprived and locked out of his own lab, he could tell that even Natasha was on edge. This marked a two week record for him insomnia and Bruce had forbidden him from entering the lab, so he had no way of distracting himself at all. The bar looked tempting. After what felt like a whole other night but was apparently twenty pitiful minutes, Tony gave up and headed to his penthouse where his own bar was waiting for him and began a binge he’d likely never remember.

He did not dwell on the fact that once a person went missing, at seventy two hours the case went from missing persons to body retrieval.

That, however, was all Natasha and Clint could think of.

....  
He had evaded Falcon in Italy by a hairsbreadth, so he had chosen to cross into France. Keeping his head down and surviving buy doing odd jobs and one of her contacts had a room set up for him. The man had shoulder length hair so black it looked purple in the sunlight. His eyes are honey colored, just a touch too light to be a normal human shade.

The man had broken into his apartment during a night terror turn hallucination and a memory stemmed from Bucky's mind and danced around him until he was calm. Then it faded in smoky wisps of Persian blue. The man introduces himself as Killjoy then, his real name was Edward and he has a gift he hates. He made nightmares reality. This was the first time he made dreams come true, before he had no idea he could do the opposite.

 

They share coffee and breakfast in his flat, on the ground level where the exits are clearer, when Bucky doesn't trust himself to be alone at the moment. There is a tension present from the moment Bucky gets his bearings after his episode.

 

It's been a week since the episode and Bucky's enjoying breakfast with a man he knows to be sarcastic and funny.

Bucky has been pacing for almost fifteen minutes.

News of the grimly titles newscasts on a slew of missing children after an attempted military coupe in a country called Sokovia, the reported tells of how this wasn’t the first time. During the war, a natural disaster, or a bombing, families would die and there would be no signs of the children.

He hasn't heard from Ellie or Medic in a few days now, they were in the area.

Edward doesn't mind. He shares his worries with Bucky and it's comforting in a strange way that he's not the only one with his stomach in knots at Ellie's radio silence. He wonders how Natasha is handling it.

Then Edward dropped a bomb on him. They had found the kid he knew as Medic dead in a hunting cabin somewhere around Belarus. He didn't really know who 'they' were but he trusted them because they were Ellie's. What was Ellie's was also Natasha's. Natasha was incredibly smart and Ellie was as paranoid as he was.

There had been signs of a struggle. Medic had been shot through a window from a tree top outside of the electronic perimeter and they found several tranquilizer darts, drag marks and broken furniture. There were several Hydra bodies as well. With the grim news the tension recedes somewhat but Bucky can tell the man wants to comfort him beyond what words are capable of.

 

"She didn't go down without a fight." He said as he clutched a steaming mug of tea. It smelled like strawberries and Bucky took a chance and added some of the strawberry jam the man, a boy really, had added to his own tea. The sweetness reminded him of Ellie's perfume and it was easier to swallow around the guilt and fear so he could speak. 

"You think she's still alive?" Bucky had to hold on to the little scrap of hope even as he felt his world crumble a little further.

 

"Death means leaving you unprotected." Edward says as he gets up and brings a fresh loaf of bread out of the oven. There are several forms baked goods around the kitchen, Bucky wonders if Edward stress bakes. He cuts the loaf carefully and hands Bucky a slice with a healthy spread of margarine. "That violates her primary directive. She won't let them kill her or let herself die."

 

They're quiet for a while as they eat, the tension mounting each time either of them licks something off their respective lips. A spread of warm baked goods with cream cheese and margarine turn into something else entirely. There are three types of jam and a variety of fruits, Bucky can't help but stare as the dark haired man bites into a deep red strawberry. When Bucky goes to try the cream cheese, Edward covers the plastic container with his hand.

 

"You're lactose intolerant. I forgot, sorry." He holds up a finger and takes out a small tub of something in white plastic with green loops from the fridge. "Vegan cheese, it's surprisingly good."

 

"Wouldn't the serum have taken care of it?" Bucky asks around his mouthful of not cheese slathered bread.

 

"Erskine's might have, but Ellie's still anemic." He says as he pops a green grape into his mouth. "The cells see it as your natural state, so the serum didn't react to the minor digestive defect. I think that's how it would go."

 

He shrugs and they continue to decimate the array of fruit, breads and breakfast spreads. The quiet is pleasant but something itches under Bucky's skin. It's asking to come out, almost begging. It tasted different on his tongue than the heavy fog around them.

 

"She'll come after me." Bucky blurts out and cringes at the blankness in his tone. The atmosphere shifts to a bleaker, more gruesome hue. "They'll make her come after me."

 

"That's why I'm here." Edward says with a grin. "If they send Pyat after you, I disable it and get her back. She might end up with a split personality though; I've never had to hack programming. Just interrogate the Hydra agents that came after us."

 

"Why Killjoy?" Bucky asks, it’s almost a ridiculous nom de guerre but strangely somber as well. The atmosphere changes again, the tension that has accompanied them returning tenfold.

 

"I literally suck the control out of a person’s mind. I am summoner of nightmares, a king of twisted imaginings. I play with a person's fears as if they were marionettes. I remind them of the worst times of their lives." He says, his voice growing quiet and as dark as his description. "I kill joy."

 

Those last three syllables are packed with so much pain and regret that Bucky finds it hard to swallow his cooling tea. The aptly named Killjoy gets up and pours him more from the still steaming pot, condensation covers the flowery porcelain. Bucky wonders if the drops of liquid are the tears this boy has shed before his gift, or curse as the petrol haired boy describes it, was under control.

 

"You've been in my head, feel free to use anything you found on people who deserve it." Bucky says abruptly. If his nightmare are of any use to the boy before him then Bucky guesses he, and the others he remembers, are vindicated through the lithe figure offering him a wan smile.

 

"Between the both of you, I'm never unarmed." His grin is all sarcasm as he looks at Bucky through pitch colored lashes.

 

"How old are you?" Bucky asks.

 

All he gets in response is a raised eyebrow, Bucky isn't blind. He can see how the kid has been raking his eyes over him, not just the arm but every inch. The scrutiny doesn't make him uncomfortable. It lights something in him, the way those nearly golden eyes flicker in the light at how he handles the butter knife or when he swallows. He can see how the man in front of him lick his lips as his eyes follow the bob of his Adams apple.

 

"You look to young to be so.." He fumbles for the word for a second, its supplied in a sea of languages except the one he's looking for. He settles for English as Romanian seems to have shut off the moment he flicks his eyes to see pupils dilating as he rubs his lower lip with is index finger. "Together."

 

"I'm twenty-six." Killjoy drawls, slightly accented English sending a shiver through Bucky's spine. The shiver is suppressed in favor of standing up and reaching over the table and grabbing the other man's nape, flesh fingers curling in his hair as he rises out of his chair without a fight. He steps over the table, agilely avoiding saucers, cutlery and food stuffs, before wrapping his arms around Bucky's shoulders and settling in his lap.

 

He tastes of strawberries and chocolate and Bucky moans as his hands, both flesh and metal travel to the younger man's ass. The plaid pajamas are a flimsy barrier compared to Bucky's jeans, he can feel the blue clad man grow hard in an instant. Bucky takes his time, kissing his mouth open and mapping out the taste of the man behind the tartness of fruit and the richness of the sweets. His metal and flesh hands kneed the smaller man's cheeks and push his hips down onto Bucky's crotch. Moans are traded and swapped on each other's tongues as Killjoy tries to undress him but Bucky has other plans.

 

The smaller man gives a tiny squeak of surprise when Bucky lifts him up and carries them over to the bedroom. Then he's too busy nibbling on Bucky's earlobe to protest about being lifted up into Bucky's arms as if he weighed the same as a toddler. When the door opens and he's laid on the bed, Bucky thinks it's almost a certainty that the man underneath him has no protests what so ever. Not by the way he deftly undoes the belt holding up his pants and flings it aside. Bucky's pants are opened just as quickly and a thin hand pulls him down for a searing kiss.

 

Moans fill the air and then the slap of skin on skin as the bed creaks ominously.

 

They don't wake up until noon, they don't even bother to shower. They just eat and enjoy the company of another warm body until they fall asleep. Bucky doesn't even mind that he's sleeping in a cooling puddle of semen as he hugs the lithe man from behind and keeps him close.

 

They don't kid themselves either, it's not love. It's just them filling the space of another they can't be with yet. 

He dreams of Steve buying him plums so dark they're sweet all the way to the pit.

 

...

...

Everything hurt. The only thing that registered beyond pain was the cold, the cold metal of the table against bare skin. The chill of the air wafting in damply as it was cycled into the room and over naked flesh. The bite of the restrains was cold too, on wrists, on forearms, ankles, and waist; around a not so breakable neck. 

Briefly, imagines flitted across the mind's eye. A memory, faces, fragments of knowledge. They were a welcome sight most of the time. The mission was still a success; the target was safe and hidden.

 

Others weren't as pleasant. If sleep had been allowed, those bits of remaining memory would be nightmares.

 

The rapid backward tip of a raven haired head, obsidian locks splayed like a spider web or the impact of a bullet in a Plexiglas window, pale green eyes opened wide in shock. The crash of broken glass and the funny hiss of a bullet whizzing through the air. Those pale green eyes, vacant, as the body containing them dropped to the floor in a lifeless pile. That once laughing warm face - pale and sharp like the weapon's own - was splattered with blood that oozed into the floorboards. There was no time to grab a gun and fight. A flurry of darts and shock batons connected with ribs, neck and as a Smith and Wesson was half removed from a hip holster. Seven still suffered while the tranquilized got to work.

 

It felt like weeks, maybe months. It could have been only yesterday. For all that time counted in a place like this. The weapon knew it had been wiped while sedated. Thoroughly enough that it couldn't remember life before this in anything but flickers and fuzzy images that swam nauseatingly and lacked sense.

 

It knew that this was not where it belonged. The mission was a success because there were only its screams in the facility and not both of theirs. Remaining captive would only ensure mission failure. The weapon had purposely failed a mission, it could not recall the mission itself only that it was not compatible with the primary mission directive. It could not fail this mission, the weapon's main handler and the mission assists could not be without the weapon.

 

Family.  
  
' _мой малыш_.' The weapon's jumbled mind supplied in a voice that was not it's own or it's main handler's voice. It was one of the mission assist's voices, the Widow. They had killed the child of whoever the weapon had been before the wipes. Cooperation and complacency was a dream the weapon's manufacturers would wake up from harshly as soon as it had the chance.

 

he electric shock was barely registered as the mind was stunned, nerves already too accustomed and their response dangerously dim and slow. The next moment that registered was the neck turning the head so a mouth could spew blood. It dribbled from chapped lips and bubbled as the weapon struggled for a breath. Lungs couldn't inhale and exhale in a timely fashion as the brain was still suffering from the shock and could not send the signals with appropriate timing. Fingers moved in spasms and the weapon barely registered a door opening. It did not see either as it's head was turned to the opposite wall where the paint was chipped and a moldy stain of damn crawled up at leisurely of weeks, months, and years pace. It advanced almost as if coordinated with the weapon's receding memories.

 

A face swam into view as cold hand turn an aching head towards it. The face was familiar. Haunting and hated. The weapon knew who this man, unfazed and pristine in his lab coat and glasses, who this monster was.

 

"Where is the Asset?" The man said and the weapon smiled with its own blood painting its lips. A tongue came out to lick away the blood and moisten its lips as its abused body fought for air.

 

The monster in men's clothing seemed pleased as his captive made to speak. He was not expecting the stream of blood and spit launched at his face. He backhanded the weapon so hard it felt both sides of its face bruise. The left from the ring on his finger and the other from the metal table. The skin would bruise but the weapon's bones where intact. His hand was probably way worse off than its face.

 

He wiped his face furiously with his uninjured hand as the dazed weapon simply laid there. With a last disapproving click of his tongue, the man turned around and instructed two other's in the room.

 

"Prepare the subject for re-calibration, get rid of these clothes and all personal affects." He instructed. "If there is any reluctance, sedate the subject and reprimand it as you wish."

 

One of the lackeys already had a hand running along the inner seem of the weapon's jeans. Too close to anatomical features that medical staff and guards had never been allowed to touch.

 

"Zola and Pierce are gone thanks to Rogers and you by extension." The doctor said. "There is no algorithm hanging over our heads if we decide to tear you like the object you are."

 

Hours pass, the weapon is no longer strapped to the table. The shock collar retaining it is still in place and its knees have been scraped raw on the cement floor and pain and tranquilizers turn its stomach.

The weapon is no longer within functioning perimeters, it will cease function in an estimated four hours. Primary mission directive will be breached.

The weapon requires half an hour of rest and medical attention before it can begin to escape and accomplish primary mission directive.

The body atop the weapon is yanked off and a gun goes off. The weapon is wrapped in a lab coat that quickly soaks up the blood covering welted and bruised skin. The collar is removed and pieces of charred skin go with it as the weapon make a noise that would be a scream if its throat wasn't raw and dry as sandpaper. It can feel the wounds bleeding a little, sluggishly, and the man apologized. The weapon feels like it might cry would it have any tears left. It knows that voice and the name it's being called.

 

"Vladyelets." The weapon whimpers as it register's the face of the man kneeling next to it on the dirty ground. It wants to curl up at the man's feet but it can't, its body is non-cooperative.

 

"Можете ли вы стоите, мою куклу?" The weapon cannot look at its master as it shakes its head. "Ничего страшного, Пойдемте со мной."

 

The man puts an arm around the weapon and helps it up. His other hand is holding the weapon's arm in place over his shoulders while the other is used to steady the weapon and slowly they make it out the door.

 

 

They make an odd couple as the slowly drift from the room they kept the weapon in for an indefinable amount of time and into what looks like the staff's personal quarters.

 

The Vladyelets guides the weapon into a room and then towards an open door in the room. All the while he hasn't stopped saying that he would care for the weapon and it had done its job well. The other room is a bathroom and he helps the weapon into the shower. The spray is warm and the weapon has to sit on a wooden stool as the blood washes off.

 

Their Vladyelets never hurt them, he always healed them and made the pain go away.

 

The Doctor and Vladyelets always took care of them and never let anyone hurt them more than what was necessary for perfect functionality.

 

Re-calibration and tests where all they allowed. Vladyelets rescued the Asset from sadistic generals and Образец пять as well. The weapon preferred to be called that because they were kind when they did that, образец пять. Even know Vladyelets called it that, the nickname than none of the STRIKE teams used. They called him Bолк, the weapon was волчонок. Волки гидры, Der Wolfe von Hydra, the wolves of Hydra. It makes the weapon sick.

 

"Пять" The man said and Пять raised it head to look at the man. "We’re going to a different facility, you will travel with me. Wash yourself and get dressed in the clothes on the bed. I will be across the hall making sure they don't hurt you again."

 

Oбразец пять nodded and took the washcloth Vladyelets held out for it. "Спасибо Vladyelets."

 

It's a wheezy croak but Oбразец пять pushed with all its strength to get the words out and the battered chest swelled with accomplishment as Vladyelets smiled. He was pleased with the Образец.

 

It takes five minutes to wash off most of the damage done. The sores burn as the water travels over them, the welts begin to tingle and the scraped knees feel tight as the skin grows back. The warm water collects in a parched mouth and is swallowed greedily. Everything is healing better than expected.

 

Its insides still hurt but they are cleaned thoroughly as is the rest of its body. It has been seven minutes and the weapon is out of the bathroom and getting dressed. Vladyelets has left a note along with the clothes on the luxurious bed. The weapon is tempted to lay in it, so it does not allow itself to sit on the soft looking mattress.

 

Instead, the weapon hobbles over to a chair and pulls on the undergarments it can. The brassier cannot be worn with fracture ribs so the undershirt would take its place. She tugged on the black pantyhose and slipped into the deep blue dress. The neckline covers the weapon's shoulders and chest nicely, hiding the burns now wrapped in gauze, and the sleeves reached its palms covering the marks from the restraints. The pleated skirt touches just above the knee and splayed out a fraction. The boots are common combat boots. The fabric was warm and pleasant to wear if unpractical.

 

The weapon was unaccustomed to make up but knew how to apply it. It knew to hide the bloody raw skin that made lips behind deep plum and the blue-ish purple of eyelids behind pasty tones and harsh black lines. The weapon looks like a doll, just like Vladyelets likes it to. However there is nothing to be done about the red circles that line the eyelashes. The skin and eyes themselves still burn and ache from the chemicals and incisions.

 

The weapon, Oбразец пять, went to stand in the middle of the room and waited for its Vladyelets. Disregarding aching limbs and organs, keeping breath at an acceptable and constant rate. The black coat had been shrugged on and both lines of buttons were secured in place when he walked in through the door.

 

He inspected it and the weapon waits, face blank behind the gossamer like mask that make up provides. When he holds his arm out to it, Oбразец пять knows it has succeeded in following the instructions he left.

 

He guides the weapon out of the room on his arm and allows it to lean on him a fraction to steady it's steps. Being so fragile is a malfunction, it needs re-calibration and repairs.  informs him so and he smiles a little, nodding and giving the weapon's hand a small pat. He will correct the malfunctions and fix the glitches in the programming. It has been too long from the last reboot.

 

The weapon nods, as protocol demands but also because it is thankful that it's handler will remove the images of a pale green eyed boy being executed and the location of the Asset. It does not communicate the last piece of information. To do so would violate Primary Mission Directive; insure the Asset. Only the input etched into its programming does not read that way.

 

Protocol dictates that when asked, the weapon must express primary mission directive as 'insure the Asset'.

 

Primary Mission Directive had been altered do to a glitch in 1962, the directive now reads: Protect James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes.

 

It is an unimportant detail, the outcome of the prime directive remains unchanged since activation and first deployment. The weapon keeps her blank eyes forward and hears the man guiding her scoff.

 

"They have played with your eye color again." He says as he regards the irises the weapon knows now to be deep blue. It cannot recall its original hair or eye color. "We will make your eyes that pale green you came with. They are the default setting. The black hair is a good change, people would recognize you to quickly if you were blonde."

"Спасибо, Vladyelets Lukin."

They reach a hanger and the weapon in restrained to a robust metal chair. A collar is fitted around it's neck then a glass case that seals with a hiss cages the weapon and the plastic-sweet taste of sedatives meets Oбразец пять tongue. The cage is wheeled into the belly of the aircraft waiting for Lukin. 

It can hear Lukin laughing with people in the cabin. The weapon frowns, where is Doctor Zola?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't kill me! Feed my muse instead! Yes Bucky had sex with an OC. Yes the OC has powers similar to Wanda's, I know. They are limited to manipulating memories, extracting them from objects where they’ve imprinted and that's about it. He is not telekinetic or telepathic, he can only twist and play memories. He's a psychologist mixed with an illusionist at best. A living B.A.R.F.  
> So yeah while Sokovia fell Bucky was probably sucking face in France. Maybe, idk. Need more intel to confirm.  
> Translation:  
> Можете ли вы стоите, мою куклу? - Mozhete li Vy ctoitye, moyu kuklu - Can you stand, my doll?  
> Ничего страшного, Пойдемте со мной - Nichevo strashnogo, Paidyomte sa mnoy - That's all right (literal: Nothing wrong), come with me.  
> Oбразец пять - Obrazets piat - Spoiler, pacients or translate it yourselves and keep it there. To yourselves.  
> ******* - Vladelets - this is a tittle and will not be revieled to to plot reasons.  
> волк - volk - wolf  
> Волки гидры - volki gidry - wolves of Hydra  
> волчонок - volchonok - wolf cub  
> Спасибо - Spaseeba - Thank you
> 
> Comments fuel my keystrokes.


End file.
